The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology:
Notes on Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism*
*“The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology” was first published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Hirschfeld-Leipzig, 1932.
Psychoanalysis is a materialistic psychology, which should be classed among the natural sciences. It points to instinctual drives and needs as the motive force behind human behavior, these drives being produced by physiologically based instincts that are not directly observable in themselves. Psychoanalysis has shown that man’s conscious psychic activity is only a relatively small sector of his psychic life, that many decisive impulses behind psychic behavior are unconscious. In particular, it has unmasked individual and collective ideologies as the expression of specific wishes and needs rooted in the instincts and shown that our “moral” and idealistic motives are in some measure the disguised and rationalized expression of instinctual drives.
Quite in line with the popular division of instincts into those of hunger and love, Freud began by assuming that two groups, the instincts for self-preservation and the sexual instincts,
served as the real motive force behind man’s psychic life. He labeled the energy inherent in the sexual instincts as libido, and the psychic processes deriving from this energy as libidinous.
With respect to the sexual instincts, Freud extended the ordinary use of this term and included under it all the urges which, like the genital impulses, are physically conditioned, attached to certain erogenous zones of the body, and seek for pleasurable tension-release.
Freud assumes that the chief principle of psychic activity is the “pleasure principle,” that is, the urge to discharge instinctual tensions in a way that will bring the maximum amount of pleasure. This pleasure principle is modified by the “reality principle”: taking reality into account may lead us to renounce or postpone pleasure in order to avoid a greater discomfort or to gain even greater pleasure at some future time.
Freud sees the specific instinctual structure of the individual conditioned by two factors: his inherited physical constitution and his life experiences—in particular, the experiences of early childhood. Freud proceeds on the assumption that man’s inherited constitution and life experiences form a “complementary chain” and that the specific task of analysis is to explore and uncover the influence of life experiences on the inherited instinctual constitution. Thus the analytic method is exquisitely historical: it seeks to understand the drive structure through the understanding of life history. This method is valid for the psychic life of healthy people as well as for the sick and neurotic. What distinguishes the neurotic from the “normal” person is the fact that the latter has successfully adapted his instinctual structure to his real needs in life, while the former’s instinctual structure has run up against certain obstacles that hinder him from satisfactorily adapting it to reality.
In order to make as clear as possible that sex instincts can be modified and adapted to reality, we must point out certain characteristics which clearly distinguish them from the instincts for self-preservation. For example, unlike the instincts for self-preservation, the sex instincts are postponable. The former are more imperative because if they are left unsatisfied too long, death will ensue; in short, prolonged postponement of their satisfaction is psychologically intolerable. This means that the instincts for self-preservation have primacy over the sex instincts—not that they play a greater role in themselves, but in case of conflict they are more urgent.
In addition, the sex-rooted drives can be repressed, while the desires emanating from the instincts for self-preservation cannot simply be removed from consciousness and placed in the unconscious. Another important distinction between the two groups of instincts is the fact that the sexual instincts can be sublimated: in other words, instead of being satisfied directly, a sexual wish can be satisfied in a way that may be far removed from the original sexual goal and blended with other ego accomplishments. The instincts for self-preservation are not capable of such sublimation. Furthermore, the drives toward self-preservation must be satisfied by real, concrete means, while the sex drives can often be satisfied by pure fantasies. A man’s hunger can only be satisfied by food, his desire to be loved, however, can be satisfied by fantasies about a good and loving God, and his sadistic tendencies can be satisfied by sadistic spectacles and phantasies.
A final important distinction is that the sex drives, unlike the drives toward self-preservation, can find expression in ways that are highly interchangeable and replaceable. If one instinctual drive is not satisfied, it can be replaced by others whose satisfaction is possible for either internal or external reasons. The interchangeability and replaceability of the sex drives is one of the keys to understanding both neurotic and healthy psychic life, and it is a cornerstone of the psychoanalytic theory. But it is also a social fact of the highest significance. It permits the masses to be offered (and satisfied by) those precise satisfactions that are socially available and desirable from the standpoint of the ruling classes.
Summing up, it can be said that the sexual instincts, which can be postponed, repressed, sublimated, and interchanged, are much more elastic and flexible than the instincts for self-preservation. The former lean on the latter, and follow their lead.
The greater flexibility and changeability of the sex instincts does not mean, however, that they can be left unsatisfied permanently; there is not only a physical but also a psychic minimum existence, and the sex instincts must be satisfied to some minimal extent. The differences between the two groups of drives, as we have noted them here, suggests rather that the sex instincts can make great adaptations to the real possibilities for satisfaction that exist, that is, to the concrete conditions of life. They grow and develop through this adaptation, and only in neurotic individuals do we find disturbances in this capacity for adaptation. Psychoanalysis has specifically pointed to the modifiability of the sex drives. It has taught us to understand the individual’s instinctual structure in terms of his life experiences, to see how the former has been influenced by the latter. The active and passive adaptation of the biological apparatus, the instincts, to social reality is the key conception of psychoanalysis, and every exploration into personal psychology proceeds from this conception.
In the very beginning—and even later on—Freud concerned himself with the psychology of the individual. But once the instincts were discovered to be the motive force behind human behavior, and once the unconscious was seen as the source of man’s ideologies and behavior patterns, it was inevitable that analytic authors would make an attempt to move from the problem of the individual to the problem of society, from individual to social psychology. They had to try to use the techniques of psychoanalysis to discover the hidden sources of the obviously irrational behavior patterns in societal life—in religion, custom, politics, and education. This obviously meant that they would encounter difficulties that were avoided so long as they restricted themselves to the realm of individual psychology.
But these difficulties do not alter the fact that the inquiry itself was a legitimate scientific consequence of the starting point of psychoanalysis. If instinctual life and the unconscious were the key to understanding human behavior, then psychoanalysis was also entitled and competent to say something about the motives underlying social behavior. For “society” too consists of living individuals, who must be subject to the same psychological laws that psychoanalysis discovered in the individual.
Thus it seems erroneous if one—as Wilhelm Reich, for example—restricts psychoanalysis to the sphere of individual psychology and to argue against its applicability to social phenomena (politics, class consciousness, etc.).
The fact that a phenomenon is studied in sociology certainly does not mean that it cannot be an object of psychoanalysis (no more than study of an object’s physical characteristics rules out study of its chemical aspects). What is meant is simply that it is an object of psychoanalysis only and wholly insofar as psychic factors play a role in the phenomenon? The thesis that psychology only deals with the individual while sociology only deals with “society” is false. For just as psychology always deals with a socialized individual, so sociology always deals with a group of individuals whose psychic structure and mechanisms must be taken into account. Later we will discuss the role that psychic factors play in societal phenomena, and point to the function of analytical social psychology.
The theory of society with which psychoanalysis seems to have both the greatest affinity and also the greatest differences is historical materialism.
They seem to have the most points of contact because they both are materialistic sciences. They do not start from “ideas” but from earthly life and needs. They are particularly close in their appraisal of consciousness, which is seen by both as less the driving force behind human behavior than the reflection of other hidden forces. But when it comes to the nature of the factors that truly condition man’s consciousness, there seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between the two theories. Historical materialism sees consciousness as the expression of social existence; psychoanalysis sees it as determined by instinctual drives. Certain questions are unavoidable: do the two views contradict each other? If not, how are they related? Can the use of the psychoanalytic method enrich historical materialism? If so, how?
Before we discuss these questions, however, it seems necessary to examine the presuppositions that psychoanalysis brings to a study of societal problems.
Freud never assumed isolated man, devoid of all social ties, to be the object of psychology.
Individual psychology, to be sure, is concerned with the individual human being, and it examines the ways in which he tries to satisfy his instinctual drives. But only rarely and under specific exceptional circumstances is it in a position to abstract from this person’s relationships with other individuals. In the individual’s psychic life, other people ordinarily must be considered as either models, objects, helpers or opponents. Thus, from the beginning, individual psychology is simultaneously social psychology—in this extended but legitimate sense.
On the other hand, Freud basically ruled out the illusion of a social psychology whose object is a group as such, “society,” or a social complex with a “mass soul” or “societal soul.” Rather, he always proceeds from the fact that every group is composed only of individuals and that only the individual as such is the subject of psychic properties. Freud likewise refused to accept the notion of a “social instinct.” What people called the “social instinct,” he felt, was “not a primitive, elemental instinct.” He sees the “origins of its development in a narrower circle, such as the family.” His views lead to the conclusion that the social attributes owe their origin, intensification, and diminution to the influence of specific living conditions and environmental relations on the instincts.
Just as, for Freud, it is always socialized man who is the object of psychology, so he sees man’s environment and living conditions playing a decisive role in his psychic development and in our theoretical understanding of it. Freud recognized the biological and physiological influence of the instincts; but he specifically emphasized to what degree these instincts could be modified and he pointed to the environment, social reality, as the modifying factor.
Thus psychoanalysis seems to include presuppositions that make its method useful for investigations in social psychology and that rule out any conflict with sociology. It seeks to know the psychic traits common to the members of a group, and to explain these common psychic traits in terms of shared life experiences. These life experiences, however, do not lie in the realm of the personal or the accidental—the larger the group is, the more this holds true—but rather they are identical with the socio-economic situation of this particular group. Thus analytical social psychology seeks to understand the instinctual apparatus of a group, its libidinous and largely unconscious behavior, in terms of its socio-economic structure.
Here an objection seems to be in order. Psychoanalysis explains instinctual development in terms of the life experiences of the earliest childhood years: that is to say, in terms of a period when the human being scarcely has anything to do with “society” but lives almost exclusively in the circle of his family. How then, according to psychoanalytic theory, can socio-economic relationships acquire such significance?
There is no real problem here at all. Of course, the first critical influences on the growing child come from the family. But the family itself, all its typical internal emotional relationships and the educational ideals it embodies, are in turn conditioned by the social and class background of the family; in short, they are conditioned by the social structure in which it is rooted. (For example: the emotional relationships between father and son are quite different in the family that is part of a bourgeois, patriarchal society than they are in the family that is part of a matriarchal society.) The family is the medium through which the society or the social class stamps its specific structure on the child, and hence on the adult. The family is the psychological agency of society.
Up to now the vast majority of psychoanalytic works, which have tried to apply psychoanalysis to social problems, have not met the requirements incumbent on any analytical social psychology.
Their failure begins in their assessment of the family’s function. They saw clearly enough that the individual can only be understood as a socialized being. They realized that it is the child’s relationships with the various family members that have a decisive influence on his instinctual development. But they have almost completely overlooked the fact that the family itself, in its whole psychological and social structure, with all its specific educational goals and emotional attitudes, is the product of a specific social and (in a narrower sense) class structure; that it is in fact simply the psychological agency of the society and class from which it comes. They had found the correct starting point for explaining the psychological influence of society on the child, but failed to take notice of it.
How was that possible? The psychoanalytic investigators were simply duped by a prejudice that they shared with every bourgeois investigator—even those who were progressive. They had turned bourgeois, capitalist society into an absolute; and they more or less consciously believed that it was the “normal” society, that its conditions and psychic factors were typical for “society” in general.
But there was another special reason why the analytical authors fell into this error. The objects of their investigations were, first and foremost, sick and healthy members of modern society and largely of the middle classes; in short, they were members of the bourgeois class,
with the same social background. What determined and differentiated their individual lives, then, were the individual, personal and from a social standpoint, accidental experiences above this generally shared foundation. All the persons studied shared the same psychic traits, insofar as these traits were the product of an authoritarian society organized around the facts of class structures and the methodical pursuit of maximal profit. They differed psychologically only insofar as one had an overly strict father who terrified him in childhood, another had an older sister who was the focus of all his love, and still another had such an overly possessive mother that he was never able to break his libidinal ties with her.
To be sure, these personal experiences were of the utmost importance for the development of the individual concerned. By removing the psychic problems that had arisen from these experiences, psychoanalysis did its full duty as a therapy; it transformed the patient into a human being who was now adjusted to the existing social order. The goal of therapy did not go beyond that, nor did it have to. Unfortunately, our theoretical understanding of the whole situation did not get beyond that, either. Neglect of the social structure, which conditioned the family structure, may have been a source of error; but it was irrelevant in actual practice for individual psychology. When it came to research in social psychology, however, what had once been an irrelevant mistake now became a disastrous source of error affecting the whole endeavor.
Psychoanalysis had focused on the structure of bourgeois society and its patriarchal family as the normal situation. Following the approach of individual psychology, it had learned to appreciate individual differences in terms of the fortuitous traumas that befell individual men. In the beginning psychoanalytic researchers explained the various phenomena of social psychology in a corresponding way: they viewed them in terms of traumas of socially fortuitous events. This necessarily led to a renunciation of the authentic analytic method. Since they did not concern themselves with the variety of life experiences, the socio-economic structure of other types of society, and therefore did not try to explain their psychic structure as determined by their social structure, they necessarily began to analogize instead of analyzing. They treated mankind or a given society as an individual transposed the specific mechanisms found in contemporary individuals to every possible type of society, and “explained” the psychic structure of these societies by analogy with certain phenomena (usually of a neurotic sort) typical of human beings in their own society.
In doing this, they overlooked a point of view that is fundamental even to psychoanalytic individual psychology. They forgot the fact that neurosis—whether a neurotic symptom or a neurotic character trait—results from the “abnormal” individual’s faulty adaptation of his instinctual drives to the reality around him most people in a society, i.e., the “healthy” people, do possess this ability to adapt. Thus phenomena studied in social (or mass) psychology cannot be explained by analogy with neurotic phenomena. They should be understood as the result of the adaptation of the instinctual apparatus to the social reality.
The most striking example of this procedure is the absolutization of the Oedipus complex, which was made into a universal human mechanism, even though sociological and ethnological studies indicated that this particular emotional relationship was probably typical only of families in a patriarchal society. The absolutizing of the Oedipus complex led Freud to base the whole development of mankind on the mechanism of father hatred and the resultant reactions,
without any regard for the material living conditions of the group under study.
Even when he started from a false sociological standpoint however, a genius like Freud was able to make worthwhile and significant discoveries.
But in the work of other analytical authors, this false starting point led to results which compromised psychoanalysis in the eyes of sociology, and of Marxist social theory in particular.
But the blame did not rest with psychoanalysis as such. In fact, one only had to apply the classical method of psychoanalytic individual psychology in a logical way to social psychology, in order to arrive at results that would meet with no objections. The fault was that psychoanalytic authors did not utilize this method is a correct way when they transferred it from the individual to social groups and social phenomena.
Here a further clarification is called for. We have emphasized the modifiability of the instinctual apparatus through the influence of external (and ultimately social) factors. But one should not overlook the fact that the instinctual apparatus, both quantitatively and qualitatively, has certain physiologically and biologically determined limits to its modifiability and that only within these limits is it subject to the influence of social factors. Because of the force of the energy it sends forth, moreover, the instinctual apparatus itself is an extremely active force; inherent in it is the tendency to alter living conditions so that they serve instinctual goals.
In the interplay of interacting psychic drives and economic conditions, the latter have primacy. Not in the sense that they represent the “stronger” motive, this question is spurious because we are not dealing with quantitatively comparable motives on the same plane. They have primacy in the sense that the satisfaction of the need for self-preservation is tied up with material production; and that the modifiability of the economic reality is more restricted than the modifiability of the human instinctual apparatus—in particular, the sexual instinct.
Applying the method of psychoanalytic individual psychology to social phenomena, we find that the phenomena of social psychology are to be understood as processes involving the active and passive adaptation of the instinctual apparatus to the socioeconomic situation. In certain fundamental respects, the instinctual apparatus itself is a biological given; but it is highly modifiable. The role of primary formative factors goes to the economic conditions. The family is the essential medium through which the economic situation exerts its formative influence on the individual’s psyche. The task of social psychology is to explain the shared, socially relevant, psychic attitudes and ideologies—and their unconscious roots in particular—in terms of the influence of economic conditions on libido strivings.
So far, then, the method of analytic social psychology seems to dovetail with the method of Freudian individual psychology and with the requirements of historical materialism. But new difficulties arise when this method is confused with an erroneous but widespread interpretation of the Marxist theory: the notion that historical materialism is a psychological theory or, more specifically, an economistic psychology.
If it were true, as Bertrand Russell claims,
that Marx saw “making money” and Freud saw “love” as the decisive motive of human conduct, then the two theories would be as irreconcilable as Russell believes. Consider his hypothetical example of the may-fly. Assuming that such a creature could think theoretically, I do not think it would say what Russell claims it would. Instead it would say that Russell had completely misinterpreted both psychoanalysis and Marxism; that psychoanalysis actually investigates the adaptation of biological factors (the instincts) to social reality, and that Marxism is not a psychological theory at all.
Russell is not the only one to misconstrue the two theories. He is joined by many other theoreticians, and his false view is matched by many similar ones.
The notion of historical materialism being an economistic psychology is espoused by Hendrik de Man with special emphasis.
As we know, Marx himself never formulated his theory of human motivation. As a matter of fact, he never explained what “class” meant. Death cut short his last work, when he was turning to this subject. But the basic conceptions from which he starts are not in doubt. Even undefined the tacit presupposition underlying his work appears both in his scholarly and political activity. Every economic thesis and every political opinion of Marx rests on the presupposition that man’s volitional motives, which bring about social progress, are dictated first and foremost by economic interests. Present-day social psychology would express the same thoughts in terms of the effect of the acquisitive drive on social conduct. If Marx himself regarded such formulations as superfluous, that is because he took it for granted that this was the object and aim of contemporary political economy.
Now this “tacit presupposition” may well have been the self-understood conception of all contemporary (i.e., bourgeois) economists; but it certainly was not the view of Marx himself, who did not share the views of contemporary theoreticians on many points.
Though in a less explicit way, Bernstein is not far from this psychologistic interpretation when he tries to defend the honor of historical materialism with this observation:
The economic interpretation of history need not mean that only economic forces and motives are to be recognized, but simply that economics is always the decisive factor that serves as the cornerstone for the great movements of history.
Behind these muddy formulations lies the notion that Marxism is an economic psychology, which is purified and improved by Bernstein in an idealist sense.
The idea that the “acquisitive drive” is the basic or only motive of human behavior is the brainchild of bourgeois liberalism, used as a psychological argument against the possibility of the realization of socialism.
Marx’s petit-bourgeois interpreters interpreted his theory as an economistic psychology. In reality, historical materialism is far from being a psychological theory; its psychological presuppositions are few and may be briefly listed: men make their own history; needs motivate men’s actions and feelings (hunger and love)
; these needs increase in the course of historical development, thereby spurring increased economic activity.
In connection with psychology, the economic factor plays a role in historical materialism only to the extent that human needs—primarily the need for self-preservation—are largely satisfied through the production of goods; in short, needs are the lever that stimulates production. Marx and Engel certainly stressed that the drive toward self-preservation took priority over all other needs, but they did not go into any detail about the quality of various drives and needs.
However, they never maintained that the “acquisitive drive,” the passion for acquisition as an aim in itself, was the only or essential need. To proclaim it a universal human drive would be naively to absolutize a psychic trait that has taken on uncommon force in capitalist society.
Marx and Engels are the last people to whom one would impute the idea of transfiguring bourgeois and capitalist traits into a universal human trait. They were well aware of the place psychology had within sociology, but they neither were nor wanted to be psychologists. Moreover, apart from indications in the French enlightenment literature (especially Helvetius), which should not, of course, be underestimated, they had no scientific materialist psychology at their disposal. Psychoanalysis was the first to provide this psychology, and showed that the “acquisitive drive,” although important, did not play a predominant role in man’s psychic armament by comparison with other (genital, sadistic, narcissistic) needs. Psychoanalysis, in fact, indicates that in large measure the “acquisitive drive” is not the deepest cause of the need to acquire or possess things; it is rather the expression of a narcissistic need or wish to win recognition from oneself and others. In a society that pays the highest recognition and admiration to the rich man, the narcissistic needs of the society’s members inevitably lead to extraordinary intensification of the desire for possessions. On the other hand, in a society where services performed for the whole society rather than property are the basis of social esteem, the same narcissistic impulses will find expression as a “drive” to contribute to society in some important way. Since narcissistic needs are among the most elemental and powerful psychic strivings, it is most important to recognize that the goals (hence the concrete content) of these narcissistic aspirations depend on the specific structure of a society. The imposing role of the “acquisitive drive,” then, is largely due to the especially high valuation of property in bourgeois society.
When the materialistic view of history talks about economic causes—apart from the meaning we have just explained—it is not talking about economics as a subjective psychological motive but as an objective influence on man’s activity in life.
All man’s activity, the satisfying of all his needs, depends on the specific nature of natural economic conditions around; and it is these conditions that determine how man shall live his life. For Marx, man’s consciousness is to be explained in terms of his existence in society, in terms of his real, earthly life that is conditioned by the state of his productive capabilities.
The production of ideas, conceptions and consciousness is directly interwoven with the material activity and the material activity of men; it is an expression of his real life. His thoughts and intellectual ideas are seen to be the direct outflow of his material activity. The same holds true for the intellectual productions that find expression in politics, law, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. Men are the producers of their conceptions and ideas, but we are talking about real, concrete men who are conditioned by the specific way in which their productive capabilities and their corresponding intercourse develops. Consciousness can never be anything but conscious being, and man’s being is his concrete life.
Historical materialism sees history as the process of man’s active and passive adaptation to the natural conditions around him. “Work is, first and foremost, a process between man and nature, a process in which man mediates, regulates and controls his interaction with nature through his own actions. Vis-à-vis the natural elements themselves, he is a natural force.”
Man and nature are the two poles here, interacting with each other, conditioning each other, and altering each other. The historical process is always bound up with man’s own nature, and natural conditions outside man. Although Marx stressed the fact that man greatly altered both himself and nature in the historical process, he always emphasized that all such changes were tied up with the existing natural conditions. This is precisely what distinguishes his standpoint from certain idealist positions that accord unlimited power to the human will.
As Marx and Engels said,
[quote]The presuppositions with which we begin are not arbitrary dogmas. They are real presuppositions, from which one can abstract only in imagination. They involve real, living individuals, their actions, and the material living conditions which they find or have created. Thus these presuppositions are verifiable in a purely empirical way.
The first presupposition of human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. So the first fact to be verified is the physical organization of these individuals and the resultant relationship between them and nature. Here we cannot go into the physical nature of man nor the varied (geological, climatic, etc.) natural conditions he finds around him. Every description of history must start with these natural foundations, and their modification in the course of history by man’s activity.
[quote]
After the correction of the most drastic misunderstandings, what emerges as the relation between psychoanalysis and historical materialism?
Psychoanalysis can enrich the overall conception of historical materialism on one specific point. It can provide a more comprehensive knowledge of one of the factors that is operative in the social process: the nature of man himself. It locates man’s instinctual apparatus among the natural factors that modify the social process, although there are also limits to this modifiability. Man’s instinctual apparatus is one of the “natural” conditions that forms part of the substructure (Unterbau) of the social process. But we are not talking about the instinctual apparatus “in general,” or in some pristine biological form, since it is only manifest in some specific form that has been modified through the social process. The human psyche—or the libidinal forces at its root—are part of the substructure; but they are not the whole substructure, as a psychologistic interpretation would have it. The human psyche always remains a psyche that has been modified by the social process. Historical materialism calls for a psychology—i.e., a science of man’s psychic structure; and psychoanalysis is the first discipline to provide a psychology that historical materialism can really use.
The contribution of psychoanalysis is particularly important for the following reasons. Marx and Engels postulated the dependence of all ideological processes on the economic substructure. They saw intellectual and psychic creations as “the material basis reflected in man’s head.” In many instances, to be sure, historical materialism could provide the right answers without any psychological presuppositions. But only where ideology was the immediate expression of economic interests; or where one was trying to establish the correlation between economic substructure and ideological superstructure. Lacking a satisfactory psychology, Marx and Engels could not explain how the material basis was reflected in man’s head and heart.
Psychoanalysis can show that man’s ideologies are the products of certain wishes, instinctual drives, interests, and needs, which themselves, in large measure, unconsciously find expression as rationalizations—i.e., as ideologies. Psychoanalysis can show that while the instinctual drives do develop on the basis of biologically determined instincts, their quantity and content are greatly affected by the individual’s socio-economic situation or class. Marx says that men are the producers of their ideologies; analytical social psychology can describe empirically the process of the production of ideologies, of the interaction of “natural” and social factors. Hence psychoanalysis can show how the economic situation is transformed into ideology via man’s drives.
An important point to note is the fact that this interaction between instincts and environment results in changes within man himself, just as his work changes extra-human nature. Here we can only suggest the general direction of this change. It involves, as Freud has stressed repeatedly, the growth of man’s ego organization and the corresponding growth of his capacity for sublimation.
Thus psychoanalysis permits us to regard the formation of ideologies as a type of “production process,” as another form of the “metabolism” between man and nature. The distinctive aspect here is that “nature” is also within man, not just outside him.
Psychoanalysis can also tell us something about the way ideologies or ideas mold society. It can show that the impact of an idea depends essentially on its unconscious content, which appeals to certain drives; that it is, as it were, the quality and intensity of the libidinal structure of a society which determines the social effect of an ideology.
If it seems clear that psychoanalytic social psychology has a valid place within historical materialism, we can now point to the way in which it can immediately resolve certain difficulties that confront the doctrine of historical materialism.
To begin with, historical materialism can now give a better answer to certain objections. Some opponents, for example, pointed to the role that ideals—e.g., love for the group, the desire for freedom—play in history. Historical materialism could, of course, spurn this type of question as a psychological problem and restrict itself to an analysis of the objective economic conditions that affect historical events. But it was not in a position to explain clearly the nature and source of these real and potent human forces, nor could it explain the role they played in the social process. Psychoanalysis can show that these seemingly ideal motives are actually the rationalized expression of instinctual, libidinous needs and that the content and scope of the dominant needs at any given moment are to be explained in terms of the influence of the socio-economic situation on the instinctual structure of the group that produces the ideology. Hence it is possible for psychoanalysis to reduce the loftiest idealistic motives to their earthly libidinal nucleus, without having to consider economic needs as the only important ones.
To sum up: (1) The realm of human drives is a natural force which, like other natural forces (soil fertility, natural irrigation, etc.), is an immediate part of the substructure of the social process. Knowledge of this force, then, is necessary for a complete understanding of the social process. (2) The way ideologies are produced and function can only be understood correctly if we know how the system of drives operates. (3) When economically conditioned factors hit upon the realm of drives, some modifications occur; by virtue of the influence of drives, the social process operates at a faster or slower tempo than one would expect if no theoretical consideration to the psychic factors is given.
Thus the use of psychoanalysis within historical materialism will provide a refinement of method, a broader knowledge of the forces at work in the social process, and greater certainty in understanding the course of history and in predicting future historical events. In particular, it will provide a complete understanding of how ideologies are produced.
The fruitfulness of a psychoanalytic social psychology will depend, of course, on the significance of the libidinal forces in the social process. We could not even begin to treat this topic thoroughly in this article, so I shall content myself with a few basic suggestions and indications.
Suppose we ask which forces maintain the stability of a given society and which undermine it. We can see that economic prosperity and social conflicts determine stability or decomposition, respectively But we can also see that the factor which, on the basis of these conditions, serves as a most important element in the social structure are the libidinal tendencies actually operative in men. Consider first a relatively stable social constellation. What holds people together? What enables them to have a certain feeling of solidarity, to adjust to the role of ruling or being ruled? To be sure, it is the external power apparatus (police, law courts, army, etc.) that keeps the society from coming apart at the seams. To be sure, it is rational and egotistic interests that contribute to structural stability. But neither the external power apparatus nor rational interests would suffice to guarantee the functioning of the society, if the libidinal strivings of the people were not involved. They serve as the “cement,” as it were, without which the society would not hold together, and which contributes to the production of important social ideologies in every cultural sphere.
Let us apply this principle to an especially important social constellation: class relationships. In history as we know it, a minority rules over the majority of society. This class rule was not the result of cunning and deceit, but was a necessary result of the total economic situation of society, of its productive forces. As Necker saw it: “Through the laws of property, the proletariat was condemned to get the barest minimum for their labor.” Or, as Linguet put it, they were “to a certain extent, a conspiracy against the majority of the human race, who could find no recourse against them.”
The Enlightenment described and criticized this dependency relationship, even though it did not realize that it was economically conditioned. Indeed, minority rule is a historical fact; but what factors allowed this dependency relationship to become stabilized?
First, of course, it was the use of physical force and the availability of these physical means to certain groups. But there was another important factor at work: the libidinal ties—anxiety, love, trust—which filled the souls of the majority in their relationships with the ruling class. Now this psychic attitude is not the product of whim or accident. It is the expression of people’s libidinal adaptation to the conditions of life imposed by economic necessity. So long as these conditions necessitate minority rule over the majority, the libido adapts itself to this economic structure and serves as one of the factors that lend stability to the class relationship.
Besides recognizing the economic conditions of the libido structure, social psychology should not forget to investigate the psychological basis of this structure. It must explore, not only why this libido structure necessarily exists, but also how it is psychologically possible and through what mechanisms it operates. Exploring the roots of the majority’s libidinal ties to the ruling minority, social psychology might discover that this tie is a repetition or continuation of the child’s psychic attitude toward his parents, particularly toward his father, in a bourgeois family.
We find a mixture of admiration, fear, faith, and confidence in the father’s strength and wisdom, briefly, an affectively conditioned reflection of his intellectual and moral qualities, and we find the same in adults of a patriarchal class society vis-à-vis the members of the ruling class. Related to this are certain moral principles which entice the poor to suffer rather than to do wrong, and which lead them to believe that the purpose of their life is to obey their rulers and do their duty. Even these ethical conceptions, which are so important for social stability, are the products of certain affective and emotional relations to those who create and represent such norms.
To be sure, the creation of these norms is not left to chance. One whole basic part of the cultural apparatus serves to form the socially required attitude in a systematic and methodical way. It is an important task of social psychology to analyze the function of the whole educational system and other systems (such as the penal system) in this process.
We have focused on the libidinal relationships between the ruling minority and the ruled majority because this factor is the social and psychic core of every class society. But other social relationships, too, bear their own distinctive libidinal stamp. The relationships between members of the same class have a different psychic coloring in the lower middle class than they do in the proletariat. Or, the relationship to the political leader is different, for example, in the case of a proletarian leader who identifies with his class and serves their interests even while he leads them, from what it is when he confronts them as a strong man, as the great father who rules as omnipotent authority.
The diversity of possible libidinal relationships is matched by the wide variety of possible emotional relationships within society. Even a brief sketch is impossible here; this problem would indeed, be a major task for an analytic social psychology. Let me just point out that every society has its own distinctive libidinal structure, even as it has its own economic, social, political, and cultural structure. This libidinal structure is the product of the influence of socio-economic conditions on human drives; in turn, it is an important factor conditioning emotional developments within the various levels of society, and the contents of the “ideological superstructure.” The libidinal structure of a society is the medium through which the economy exerts its influence on man’s intellectual and mental manifestations.
Of course, the libidinal structure of a society does not remain constant, no more than does its economic and social structure. But it remains relatively constant so long as the social structure retains a certain equilibrium—i.e., during the phase of relative consolidation in the society’s development. With the growth of objective contradictions and conflicts within the society, and with the acceleration of the disintegration process, certain changes in the society’s libidinal structure also take place. We see the disappearance of traditional ties that maintained the stability of the society; there is change in traditional emotional attitudes. Libidinal energies are freed for new uses, and thus change their social function. They no longer serve the preservation of the society, but contribute to the development of new social formations. They cease to be “cement,” and turn into dynamite.
Let us return to the question we were discussing at the beginning: the relationship of the drives to life experiences—i.e., to the objective conditions of life. We have seen that analytic individual psychology views instinctual development as the result of the active and passive adaptation of the instinctual apparatus to the actual conditions of life. In principle, the same relationship holds true between a society’s libidinal structure and its economic conditions: it is a process of active and passive adaptation of the society’s libidinal structure to the existing economic conditions. Human beings, driven by their libidinous impulses, bring about changes in the economic conditions; the changed economic conditions cause new libidinal goals and satisfactions to arise. The decisive point is that all these changes ultimately go back to the economic conditions, that the drives and needs change and adapt themselves in accordance with economic conditions.
Clearly, analytic psychology has its place within the framework of historical materialism. It investigates one of the natural factors that is operative in the relationship between society and nature: the realm of human drives, and the active and passive role they play within the social process. Thus it investigates a factor that plays a decisive mediating role between the economic base and the formation of ideologies. Thus analytic social psychology enables us to understand fully the ideological superstructure in terms of the process that goes on between society and man’s nature.
Now we can readily summarize the findings of our study on the method and function of a psychoanalytic social psychology. Its method is that of classical Freudian psychoanalysis as applied to social phenomena. It explains the shared, socially relevant, psychic attitudes in terms of the process of active and passive adaptation of the apparatus of drives to the socio-economic living conditions of the society.
Its task is, first of all, to analyze the socially relevant libidinal strivings: i.e., to describe the libidinal structure of a given society, and to explain the origin of this structure and its function in the social process. An important element of this work, then, will be the theory explaining how ideologies arise from the interaction of the psychic apparatus and the socio-economic conditions.
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