111 CHAPTER TEN 2 3 4 5 6 711 The social unconscious and 8 9 ideology: in clinical theory 10 and practice 1 2 3 Farhad Dalal 4 5 6 7 8 9 211 Introduction 1 2 et me begin with two questions: why is it that in the psycho- 3 analytic world, we find ourselves in this curious position of 4 L having to argue for the social? And why is it that the argu- 5 ment tends to have a defensive quality about it, of having to justify 6 something that seems to go against the grain? 7 In part, this is because of the established norm in the psycho- 8 analytic mainstream, this being that the social is secondary to, and 9 born of, the psychological. It is perhaps not surprising to hear Klein 30 say, “the understanding of [the individual’s] personality is the 1 foundation for the understanding of social life” (Klein, 1959, p. 247). 2 Neither is it surprising to hear Bion say, 3 4 I think that the central position in group dynamics is occupied by 5 the more primitive mechanisms [of] . . . the paranoid–schizoid and 6 depressive positions . . . [It] is necessary to work through . . . the 7 more primitive anxieties of part-object relationships . . . [as] I consider 8 [them] . . . to contain the ultimate sources of all group behaviour. [Bion, 911 1961, p. 189, my italics]
243 244 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 Both Klein and Bion have their genesis in the later Freud. But, 2 unlike them, Freud does grant the social an actual presence in the 3 psyche in the shape of the superego. The Freudian superego is, in 4 part, constituted by internalized elements of authority figures (in 5 contrast, the Kleinian superego is constituted by elements of the 6 death instinct). But one of the primary reasons that it comes into 7 existence is to do the work of repressing primitive impulses: for 8 example, incestuous desire. Thus, ironically, a part of the work of 9 the representative of the social in the psyche (the superego) is to 10 increase the dominion of the unconscious through its activity of 1 repression. However, when humans gather in groups, then the 2 superego loses its grip: 3 4 when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhi- 5 bitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts, 6 which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are 711 stirred up to find free gratification. [Freud, 1921c, p. 79] 8 Freud also says, “how well justified is the identification of the 9 group mind with the mind of primitive people” (ibid.). 20 But, surprisingly, even the relationists like Fairbairn and 1 2 Winnicott, despite their best efforts, also ultimately collapse back 3 into individualism: Fairbairn’s claim that “all sociological problems 4 are ultimately reducible to problems of individual psychology” 511 (Fairbairn, 1935, p. 241), finds an echo in Winnicott’s “the clue to 6 social and group psychology is the psychology of the individual” 7 (Winnicott, 1958, p. 15). 8 This, then, is the dominant view in psychoanalysis: that the 9 internal primitive psychology is prior to the individual, who, in 311 turn, is prior to the social. The social itself is an expression of a 1 pre-existing psychology within the individual. In other words, the 2 psychological is the “cause” and the social is its “effect”. Thus, 3 the social has little status since it comes third in order of impor- 4 tance: first, the internal psychology, then, the individual, and 5 finally, the social. And it is because this is the context that we 6 are speaking into that the tone taken by the arguments which seek 7 to privilege the social is defensive; it is an argument against 8 an established, taken-for-granted norm, an argument against the 911 grain. THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 245
111 The positivist schema 2 3 This norm arises out of a particular positivist world-view, a world- 4 view that continues to dominate not only psychoanalysis, but many 5 other disciplines. It is also the basis of the thinking of policy makers 6 in the UK, permeating all territories from mental health to the econ- 711 omy to ecology. 8 The positivists hold that the objective world-of-things exists 9 before individual humans, and individual humans exist before soci- 10 ety. In this view, society is not just secondary, but tertiary, since it 1 arises because of individuals joining together with other individu- 2 als. It can be depicted as shown below (Figure 1). 3 In this “picture”, there are two distinct regions. The space 4 between the individual and the world of things is where objective 5 science is said to happen. Science, in this account, is the activity of 6 the individual studying the world of things. Meanwhile, it is 7 supposed that it is in the other space, between the individual and 8 society, is where politics happens, politics being the various (prob- 9 lematic) engagements and struggles individuals have with each 211 other in their attempts to join together and form society. 1 From this depiction, it would appear, then, that the two 2 regions—science and politics—have nothing to do with each other, 3 as they each occupy different “spaces”. This is the basis of the claim 4 that politics has nothing to do with science, and so politics ought to 5 be kept out of science (and art, and sport, and everything else). 6 This schema is linear. And it is this very linearity that allows it 7 to seem that politics and science are very different kinds of activities 8 that have nothing to do with each other. One of the points I want to 9 flag up at this early stage is that the diagram and the way of think- 30 ing that it illustrates is already an expression of a certain ideology, 1 2 (autonomous rational) 3 First, the world of things then The Individual then the social world 4 Region of Scientific Activity Region of Politics 5 The individual investigating the Individuals engaging with 6 workings of the world. each other. 7 Clear and rational. Messy and confusing. 8 911 Figure 1. The positivist world view. 246 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 an ideology that privileges the individual over the social. I will say 2 more on ideology and related matters as I proceed. But, for now, I 3 want to make the point that the apparent “obvious” division 4 between the objective world and that of human interaction only 5 appears to be so obvious because of the premises utilized in 6 constructing the diagram. The diagram is not a straightforward 7 description of the natural state of things (which is how it looks on 8 first impression), but a division generated by a particular ideology, 9 an ideology that serves particular ends. As we will see shortly, there 10 are other ways of representing and thinking about the situation, 1 and these give rise to other “outcomes”, other ends. 2 Anyhow, it is on this kind of basis that politicians claim that, 3 although they are in the business of politics, the decisions they take 4 are fully rational because they are made on the basis of scientific 5 evidence. (Consider, for example, President Obama’s recent rever- 6 sal of George Bush’s ban on stem cell research. Obama said that his 711 decision was driven by scientific evidence, whereas Bush had made 8 his decision “in consultation with God”.) However, there is no 9 discussion as to what constitutes scientific evidence, as this is a part 20 of the taken for granted. The taken for granted always pushes in 1 certain directions, always towards certain ends, but always surrepti- 2 tiously. A case in point is the current reorganization of psychologi- 3 cal therapies in the UK. The government demands that psycho- 4 logical therapies ought to be “evidence based”. But what counts as 511 evidence privileges a certain kind of therapy (the cognitive) over 6 other kinds. It is not surprising, given that the scientific methodol- 7 ogy being used to gather this “evidence” is positivist, that it ends 8 up finding in favour of a psychological modality that is also posi- 9 tivist. The ends are already present in the means. The ends that are 311 being served are manifold: a great many people are apparently 1 treated, rapidly and cheaply, and the government is seen to be 2 doing something helpful, while, at the same time, managing to 3 “save” money. And the entire enterprise is legitimated by appar- 4 ently being “scientific”. The sting in this particular serpent’s tail 5 will, no doubt, be felt in the not too distant future. 6 Anyway, let me return and attend more directly to the positivist 7 schema. According to the rationales of this schema, it is possible to 8 figure out how the world-of-things works, because it works accord- 911 ing to the rules of cause and effect. These rules can be worked out THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 247
111 through the rational individual doing objective science. However, 2 what constitutes science is not a given, although the way the situa- 3 tion is set up, it appears that this is so, and that, therefore, there is 4 nothing here to be questioned. 5 This kind of understanding of science arises from the positivist 6 world-view in which there is the priority of “things” over “ideas 711 about those things”. You see what you see because what you see is 8 real and plainly there to see. It exists as itself, before you see it. You 9 speak what you see. Observation is direct, unproblematic, and 10 value free. 1 So, on the left hand side of Figure 1, above, we have the possi- 2 bility of clarity and predictability, while on the right hand side, in 3 the region of politics, humans seem to behave in ways that appear 4 irrational and, therefore, unpredictable. 5 (Let us note one other thing: although this linear story begins 6 with the world of things, agency is located in the autonomous ratio- 7 nal individual.) 8 So, on one side of the picture we have clarity, and on the other 9 side, confusion. The question we are now faced with is why, despite 211 their rational capacities, do humans behave in seemingly irrational 1 ways? As we have seen, some of the psychoanalysts above (in 2 particular, Bion) have answered that they behave in these irrational 3 ways because of the eruption of the primitive in the psyche. I will 4 sketch Freud’s version of events. 5 6 7 The Freudian schema 8 9 Freud (1930a) famously gave an explanation for the irrationality of 30 humans through a description of the way the mind comes to be 1 structured. In his view, the mind was as it was because of the 2 residue of two histories, the first history being that of the human 3 species (the primal horde and so on). The effects of these primitive 4 and powerful themes from the dawn of humankind are laid down 5 in the psyche in the form of the instincts. The second history is that 6 of early childhood and of psychological development. This is the 7 story of what happens when the first history (in the shape of the 8 primitive instincts) are confronted with other people and objective 911 reality in the present. 248 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 Although the developmental process is mostly and more or less 2 successful, human rationality during adulthood is always compro- 3 mised by the residue of both histories, that of a particular develop- 4 mental story, as well as that of archaic primitive processes. Both of 5 these continue to have a life in the unconscious, from where they 6 come to have an invisible role in our seemingly rational life. It 7 follows then that our rationales for doing things are always, to some 8 degree, rationalizations. 9 The Freudian model is akin to that of Kant in the following 10 sense. Kant (1999) thought that humans were born with certain 1 categories of logic already present in the mind, and said that 2 humans experience the world through these categories. So, Kant is 3 called an idealist, because he privileges these a priori ideas (cate- 4 gories) over things. In this context, what a priori means is innate 5 knowledge, which is to be contrasted with knowledge gained 6 through lived experience. This a priori, innate knowledge not only 711 exists prior to experience, it also forms that experience. The cate- 8 gories inform what we are able to see and the way we see it. The 9 Freudian equivalent of Kantian categories (Figure 2) is that of the 20 instincts. Freud would say that we come to experience the world 1 and others in the ways that we do because our experiences are 2 mediated and permeated by the instincts (Klein calls these, innate 3 unconscious phantasies). 4 When it comes to classical psychoanalytic treatment, the situa- 511 tion is complicated (I am oversimplifying the situation to tease out 6 the points of interest). On the one hand (as Freud himself pro- 7 posed), the psychoanalyst is conceived of as a scientist, a scientist 8 capable of objective rational thought and observation. The patient, 9 however, is a Freudian creature, in that the patient’s rationality is 311 subject to, and permeated by, unconscious processes. The patient is 1 placed on the side of things—an object being investigated by the 2 rational psychoanalyst. The purpose of the investigation is to 3 expose and understand the workings of the two histories within the 4 unconscious, so that the patient has more possibility of operating 5 6 World of things The Individual The social world 7 (Freudian) patient (rational) psychoanalyst 8 911 Figure 2. Classical treatment according to the positivist/Freudian schema. THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 249
111 rationally. In this world-view, the analyst is confident that his 2 observations and deductions are value free and objective. The 3 methodology is “scientific”, consisting of observation, hypotheses 4 formation, testing the hypotheses, and so on. 5 In sum, the psychoanalytic method is the use of scientific 6 methodology, drawn from the left hand side of Figure 1, to bring 711 more clarity and understanding to the messy right hand side of 8 Figure 1, human motivation and behaviour. 9 10 1 The Eliasian/radical Foulkesian schema 2 3 But what if we come at this scenario from the opposite direction 4 and redraw the picture? In this case, the social precedes individu- 5 als and we will arrive at a radically different understanding of 6 human motivation (Figure 3). 7 The first thing to note is that the social, by definition, is the 8 domain of the political. The political is an eternally conflicted field, 9 generated and constituted by p;ower relations, of which it is an 211 expression. 1 What is important about this “picture” is that it makes clear that 2 as power struggles and politics are there at the beginning of the 3 picture, they must permeate all that follows. This includes not only 4 the psyches of the individuals that are born into the social, but also 5 the relations that take place between them. But most importantly 6 for our purposes, the logic of the picture exposes the fact that poli- activity 7 tics and power themes must necessarily permeate the of science—the study of how things work. 8 This picture is also linear, and so, as a representation of the 9 processes of human existence, it, too, is an over-simplification. But, 30 1 First, the social world The Individual Then the world of things 2 (permeated by the social) 3 4 Region of Scientific Activity 5 Region of Politics Necessarily permeated by 6 Of power relations the field of power relations— 7 the social. 8 911 Figure 3. The Eliasian/radical Foulkesian schema. 250 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 despite this obvious limitation, its virtue resides in the fact that it 2 shows how and why the activity of science is, of necessity, imbued 3 with the agendas of the human beings that engage in it. 4 5 6 The developmental story 7 8 There is a critical consequence for the developmental story in this 9 scenario. 10 What becomes clear is that, as each particular individual is born 1 into the social milieu, he or she cannot help but imbibe the dominant 2 discourses that are embedded within that milieu, and these must 3 become fundamental and integral to the developing individual self. 4 What is prior to the newborn infant in this scenario is what is 5 written into the fabric of the social, thus effectively reversing the 6 previous statements of the psychoanalysts: 711 the understanding of social life is the foundation for the under- 8 standing of [the individual’s] personality (from Klein). 9 all problems of individual psychology are ultimately reducible to 20 sociological problems (from Fairbairn). 1 2 the clue to the psychology of the individual is social and group 3 psychology (from Winnicott). 4 What we are now faced with is a social a priori. One name for the 511 social a priori is the Foulkesian one of the social unconscious. There 6 are two dangers here. The first we have already noted, that this 7 picture, being so linear, does not capture the complexities of human 8 existence; the picture is a one-way street beginning in the social and 9 driving right through everything that follows it. This, then, leads 311 into the second danger that we now fall into: the error of social 1 determinism, what Wrong (1962) has called the over-socialized 2 conception of “Man”. Both these dangers give rise, quite rightly, to 3 the following objection. 4 5 An objection and a confession 6 7 Surely, the individual infant is not a complete tabula rasa at the point 8 of birth, entirely at the mercy of the social, with the individual 911 being written on and into by discourse and ideology? Surely, THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 251
111 humans are more substantial than that? What of human autonomy 2 and responsibility? Another way of putting the objection is this: 3 what is the source of the individuality of individuals? If everyone 4 were simply formed by discourse, then we would expect people to 5 be much more regimented than they actually are; this is clearly not 6 the case: individuals vary enormously, each individual is, indeed, 711 unique. So, what is the basis of this uniqueness? 8 I agree with the objection, and am interested in the questions 9 that it gives rise to, but do not agree with the ways that the ques- 10 tions are often answered. 1 The territory that this question is engaged with is that of the 2 moment of birth. The question becomes one of what is already 3 present at birth, and how is one to think about it? Or, to put it 4 another way, what is the nature of the clay that is to be moulded by 5 the psycho-socio-developmental processes, and how plastic or 6 resistant is it to being moulded? 7 And here is the thing: the answers to these questions cannot 8 help but be ideological, in support of this or that world-view. If the 9 radical direction is right, then it has to be the case that the answers 211 to these questions cannot ever be purely scientific, objective and 1 neutral, but will have all sorts of other functions and purposes, 2 some of which are known and knowable, and others not. In other 3 words, this issue is already an explication of the theme of this chap- 4 ter: that one cannot ever reside outside the ideological and, there- 5 fore, the politica, even in the clinic. This, however, is not to suggest 6 that the only possibility before one is docile submission to the 7 prevalent world order. This is because the methodology of 8 Foulkesian group analysis has the potential to subvert and decon- 9 struct ruling ideologies, even as it inevitably promotes alternative 30 ones. 1 This is also true of me, of course, as well as of this paper— 2 neither are ideology-free. So, let me come clean about where I 3 stand, or at least as much as I know about it: I want to argue against 4 the individualism and internalism endemic to much psychoanalytic 5 discourse—the viewpoint that says that the source of all human life, 6 as we know it, emerges from the asocial internal world of asocial 7 individuals; a viewpoint in which introjection is the poor cousin of 8 projection; a viewpoint that supposes that there can exist such a 911 thing as “the” individual in the singular. 252 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 In saying this, I do not wish to claim that there are no such enti- 2 ties called individuals per se. I want, instead, to advocate for some- 3 thing similar to Hannah Arendt when she chastises Karl Marx, no 4 less, of getting it wrong when he speaks of “Man”. She says that 5 “the human condition [is that] of plurality . . . the fact [is] that men, 6 not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world” (1998[1958], p. 7). 7 Human life begins and continues in the plural and has never been 8 in the singular. 9 In my view, if we begin the story not with the individual 10 (e.g., Klein, Freud), or with the individual-in-relation with another 1 individual (e.g., Winnicott, Fairbairn), or with individuals-in- 2 relation (e.g., Foulkes, Mitchell), but with individuals-in-social- 3 relation (e.g., Elias), then we find ourselves in a new paradigm, in 4 which not only the theory of human interaction, but also the prac- 5 tice and technique of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy is consider- 6 ably different (Dalal, 1998, 2002). 711 Let me return to the objection itself, and the way it is often 8 answered. The answer begins with the truism that the infant comes 9 into the world already formed to some degree. The moment of birth 20 is often described as one where a new psycho-biological being is 1 born into, and, for the first time, is confronted with an established 2 social order. This newborn is a unique body, certainly, and, being 3 body, it is thought of as pure biology. This infant also has its own 4 unique responses to its environment and carers, which, being 511 unique, is described as its character. And being there right at the 6 beginning of its life, before the social has had any chance of doing 7 its work, it would seem that this uniqueness is its true nature—a 8 unique nature that is personal, because it is prior to, and unsullied 9 by, the social. To this way of thinking, the true self resides in the 311 domain of Nature, a domain that is continually being threatened 1 and distorted by the domain of Culture. 2 There are several points of disagreement here. 3 The first disagreement is with the wish to fix what is present at 4 the moment of birth as “true character”. Given that character con- 5 tinues to change right through one’s life, what are the grounds on 6 which it is claimed that it is at this moment that the individual’s 7 personality is at its truest and purest? In saying this, I do not wish 8 to fall into the alternative error of claiming that this moment—of 911 birth—is of no more significance than any other. That, too, would THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 253
111 be nonsense. Birth is obviously a highly charged and significant 2 moment when family and infant meet each other face to face for the 3 first time. It is also the case that much experience has already taken 4 place in the womb. Where are we to insert “the beginning”? In this 5 discussion, the Vitalists might perhaps use the language of “soul” 6 and “the spark of life” to capture the unique mystery that is indi- 711 vidual human aliveness. 8 We should also note, in passing, the claim made by some psycho- 9 analytic schools that those suffering from character disorders cannot 10 change, while those suffering from neurotic disorders can. 1 My second point of disagreement is with the Humanistic claim 2 that the shape of the character at birth is the “true self” and the 3 changes that take place through the psycho–social–developmental 4 process constitute a dilution and contamination of this true self. I 5 would also disagree with the classical psychoanalytic formulation 6 in which the psycho–social–developmental processes are conceived 7 of as consisting of modulating something primitive in the shape of 8 instincts or drives into something civilized. 9 My ethos would find affinity with aspects of the psychoanalytic 211 schools of relationality (e.g., Winnicott and Fairbairn), attachment 1 (e.g., Bowlby and Holmes), and most closely, intersubjectivity 2 (Mitchell), but with the following important caveat: that the processes 3 of relationality, attachment, and intersubjectivity take place in a 4 sociological milieu, and that their shapes and forms are driven by 5 the discourses that prevail. What this means is that power relations 6 are intrinsic to relational, attachment, and intersubjective processes: 7 it is this that is the essence of what the social unconscious. 8 The body, being body, is readily thought of as a biological entity. 9 It is. But it is also a sociological entity. Over the aeons, our physical 30 bodies have evolved always in relation to other bodies. In other 1 words, sociological themes have always been present throughout 2 the biological evolutionary processes and so are embedded in the 3 structure of our bodies, into our biology. Thus, the newborn’s bio- 4 logical body is already social. The birth of an individual is not the 5 first occasion on which biology meets society. As Elias says: 6 “Human society is a level of nature” (Elias, 1991, p. 85). He contin- 7 ues, “humans are by their nature made for a life with each other, a life 8 which . . . includes interpersonal and inter-group struggles and their 911 management” (ibid., p. 91, my italics). 254 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 So, something about what Kant and Freud say is right after all, 2 but not quite in the ways that they meant them. The infant does 3 come into the world knowing something, but not exactly with 4 Kantian categories (although Klein thought that this was indeed the 5 case, that the infant comes into the world with the categories breast, 6 penis, and vagina already present in the mind (Hinshelwood, 1991, 7 pp. 324–326)). It does already “know” something about spatial and 8 temporal relationships, cause and effect, and so on. The infant 9 comes into the world not just ready to relate, but already involved in 10 the process of relating. And, most dramatically, the intersubjec- 1 tivists tell us that the sense of self itself comes to be constituted 2 through the processes of relating. What radical group analysis has 3 to add to this is the reminder that intersubjectivity and the pro- 4 cesses of relating are always a social process, and this necessarily 5 involves power relations, and so power relations necessarily come 6 to have a formative role from the beginning in the constitution of 711 the developing individual. 8 Let me now return to the main subject of this paper: the social 9 unconscious. 20 1 2 The social a priori 3 4 Foulkes is not the first, or the last, to come up with the idea of a 511 social a priori; a great number and range of scholars have proposed 6 some version of it. Hopper (2003, p. 159) tells us that “although 7 Karen Horney was the first psychoanalyst to apply the [notion of] 8 the social unconscious to clinical work . . . the concept was intro- 9 duced by [Erich] Fromm”. Foulkes, however, makes no mention of 311 Fromm. Hopper suggests that this is because Foulkes thought 1 Fromm too left wing (personal communication). 2 The question being engaged with is this: how is it that (broadly 3 and not without contestation) in particular times and places, 4 humans (in the plural) come to share a view (more or less) of what 5 is right, what is wrong, of the way things are, and so on? And that 6 this is the case despite the range and variety of individual personal 7 histories. In other words, how do we (in the plural) come to take 8 certain things for granted, things that are not only outside the scope 911 of our consciousness, but the basis of it? THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 255
111 And variously, the scholars all answer that the basis of these 2 attitudes are to be found in the unreflected conventions that we 3 are each born into, that we each imbibe, and that we each repro- 4 duce and reinforce, all without knowing that we are doing so 5 (Table 1). 6 Perhaps the most well known of these scholars is Marx. In his 711 view, the ruling classes deliberately (that is, consciously) promul- 8 gated a false ideology that the working classes were unable to resist, 9 the purpose of the ideology being to convince the oppressed that 10 there was no alternative to their exploitation because they were 1 participating in the natural order of things. 2 Althusser (1969) went further, saying that ideology is uncon- 3 scious, and unconscious not only to the oppressed, but also to the 4 oppressors, with each genuinely believing that the status quo is an 5 expression of the natural order of things. 6 Hegel (before Marx) had proposed that individuals came to 7 think in similar ways to each other through participation in, and 8 absorption of, the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times). Hegel (1979), 9 too, thought that there were a priori categories that existed prior to 211 individuals, categories through which individuals experienced 1 themselves and the world. But Hegel’s categories differ from 2 Kant’s, in that they are to be found in the social that the individual 3 is born into. (I am aware that, in speaking of the social, I am, in fact, 4 reifying the process of ongoing human interaction. In doing this, I 5 6 Table 1. Varieties of the social a priori. 7 Scholar Variety 8 9 Foulkes Social unconscious 30 Marx Ideology (conscious) 1 Althusser Ideology (unconscious) 2 Hegel Zeitgeist, categories 3 Barthes Mythology 4 Lacan Unconscious like language Elias Symbol, habitus 5 Foucault Epistemes, discourse 6 Kuhn Paradigms 7 Bourdieu Habitus 8 Leyton Normative unconscious processes 911 256 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 am giving succour to the view that the social and the individual are 2 different and antithetical to each other. My view follows that of 3 Elias, which is that notions of individual and social are both 4 abstractions and aspects of the same psycho-socio-genetic process 5 of human interaction.) 6 Barthes talks of these social conventions as mythology. He says, 7 8 myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justifi- 9 cation, and making contingency appear eternal . . . [myth] has 10 turned reality inside out, it has emptied it of history and has filled 1 it with nature . . . myth is depoliticized speech. [Barthes, 1984, p. 142, 2 my italics] 3 Elias (1991) says that we come to think alike because, through 4 language, we all participate in a dimension he calls symbol; he also 5 habitus 6 puts forward a notion of to account for the unreflected 711 consensual. Foucault (1972) has two terms for these habituated 8 ways of experiencing and perceiving the world: epistemes and 9 discourses. Kuhn’s (1962) term is paradigms. Then there is Bourdieu 20 (1986), who also speaks of habitus. 1 It is also the case that there are many scholars from within the 2 psychoanalytic tradition itself (e.g., Marcuse, Habermas, Fromm, 3 and Sullivan, among many others) who have also struggled with 4 this sort of question. It has to be said, however, that mostly they are 511 not considered to be significant and remain at the margins of 6 contemporary mainstream psychoanalytic conversation. Perhaps 7 best known is Lacan’s (2007) explanation for the commonality of 8 perception, this being that the individual’s unconscious is struc- 9 tured like a language, and language is always communal, and prior 311 to the birth of any individual. There are many others in the psycho- 1 analytic field engaging with this kind of question, for example, 2 Cushman (1994) and, most recently, Leyton (2006) has spoken to 3 these themes through her notion of normative unconscious processes. 4 Not to be forgotten is the work of Hopper (2003), and the other 5 voices included in this volume. 6 This, then, is a way of thinking about the social unconscious: in 7 any period, one or other particular world-view comes to prevail 8 and extensively dominate one’s faculties, and leads to particular 911 ways of experiencing events. During these times, there seems no THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 257
111 sensible alternative to these world-views. To the flat-earth way of 2 thinking, the idea of a spherical earth is not only implausible, but 3 incredible, and obviously wrong. The spherical alternative belies 4 their actual experience of flatness. These unreflected world-views are 5 the basis of the phenomenon that we call common sense. It is a sense 6 that is common to all, and is so obvious that, in the main, it does not 711 even occur to one to question it. In the positivist schema (Figure 1), 8 it is made obvious that politics can have nothing to do with science, 9 and those that think otherwise are plainly mistaken, as is evident in 10 the diagram. 1 These seemingly all-powerful world-views are not eternal, 2 however. They are continually being interrogated by other options 3 residing on the margins, and through this process, over time, the 4 dominant world-views come to mutate into new shapes; on occa- 5 sion the shift is not gradual, but sudden and cataclysmic. In other 6 words, even in the time of the flat earth, there are others who are 7 able to have alternative conceptions and theories as to the shape 8 and nature of the earth—not all of them correct of course—and, 9 depending, the other options are either treated as errors, ignored as 211 idiotic, or attacked and repressed as heretical. 1 My purpose in listing these thinkers (and by no means does the 2 list pretend to be a complete one) is not to tease out the differences 3 in each of their conceptions of the social a priori. Rather, the purpose 4 is to make the point that the idea that humans are both formed and 5 constrained by the social orders they inhabit is hardly a novel one, 6 although it appears to be so to many of those inhabiting some quar- 7 ters of the psychoanalytic world. And they believe this, despite the 8 fact that much before Marx, Arendt, or Elias, even someone like 9 Thomas Aquinas (hardly a revolutionary left-wing radical) had 30 already said that “man is by nature political, that is, social” (“homo 1 est naturaliter politicus, id est, socialis”, quoted in Arendt, 1998, 2 p. 23). The only way to explain how it is that this kind of tunnel 3 vision continues to hold sway within certain psychoanalytic circles 4 is to say that they are blinded by, and in the grip of, an ideology, an 5 individualistic and internalist ideology. 6 Not all psychoanalysts and group analysts think like this, of 7 course, as exemplified by those mentioned above. But they can 8 hardly be construed as mainstream, particularly in the British 911 context. 258 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 The clinic: implications 2 3 To begin with, let me summarize where I have come to and, in the 4 process, say something about the relationship (as I understand it) 5 between the two terms I have been using, ideology and discourse. 6 Ideology is unconscious. It is the taken for granted that is 7 utilized in formulating ideas and experiences. It provides the cate- 8 gories we use in our thinking: ideology is the basis of what we call 9 common sense. It legitimates the interests of interest groups, but in 10 ways that are hard to recognize. This is because the work of ideol- 1 ogy is to give the historical and contingent the appearance of the 2 natural and inevitable. 3 As Harland says, 4 5 The individual absorbs language before he can think for himself: indeed the absorption of language is the very condition of being 6 able to think for himself . . . Words and meanings have been 711 deposited in the individual’s brain below the level of conscious 8 ownership and mastery. They lie within him like an undigested 9 piece of society. [Harland, 1987, pp. 12–13] 20 1 Elias shares this view. Language, according to Elias, is not a passive 2 means of representing the world; it actively informs the sort of 3 world one experiences. He says that language provides people with 4 “the means of orienting themselves far beyond the field of their 511 personal experience” (1991, p. 125, my italics). 6 Here is the thing: the kinds of languages one is born into and 7 absorbs both form and constrain thought, emotion, and experience 8 itself. Note: I am speaking in the plural, of languages, not langu- 9 age, the significance of this being that the turbulent relationship 311 between these languages/discourses opens up a space in which 1 reflection becomes possible. This last point is critical. In itself, it is 2 a description of group analytic methodology. 3 Discourse, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive notion. 4 It includes ideology, that is, language categories and ideas, but also 5 includes the forms of practice that are informed by that language. 6 The theory and practice reinforce and support each other. 7 Discourses furnish the very criterion by which its results are 8 judged successful. Discourses are self-validating. One cannot ask 911 from within a discourse whether it itself is true or not, as it THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 259
111 furnishes the basis on which we judge what is true and what is 2 good. Discourses impose a taxonomy on the world and the mind. 3 Taxonomies are systems of inclusion and exclusion, and the means 4 by these are achieved are never value free. 5 It follows, then, that the theories and practices of psychoanalysis 6 and group analysis can also never be value free. 711 Those who would defend the view that the activity of analysis 8 inclines towards the objective do so by claiming that the theory of 9 psychoanalysis is based on scientific evidence gathered in the clinic 10 through the practice of psychoanalysis. The defence is positivist, in 1 that it presumes that theory and practice are distinct from each 2 other, and that neither is tarnished by politics and ideological agen- 3 das. 4 But, as the psychoanalysts Greenberg and Mitchell remind us, 5 6 There are no purely objective facts and observations which lie 7 outside of theory . . . One’s theory, one’s understanding, one’s way 8 of thinking, determine what are likely to be taken as facts, determine 9 how and what one observes. Observation itself is understood to be 211 “theory laden”. [Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983, p. 16, my italics] 1 2 This chapter, then, is a reminder of something already well 3 established, but hard to remember: that the therapist’s perceptions 4 and interventions are inevitably compromised by the ideologies that 5 the therapist unwittingly subscribes to, as well as the discourses 6 that the therapist unknowingly participates in. This results in the 7 therapist/analyst unthinkingly reproducing and reinforcing these 8 ideologies and discourses through their activities, despite themselves. 9 As Elias says, structures have histories and histories have structure. 30 In other words, history is structured into the psyche, a history of 1 norms and values. In fact this is exactly how Freud describes the 2 contents of the superego. These taken-for-granted norms and 3 values, born of a particular history in a particular time, privilege 4 certain ways of thinking while they close off others. And this takes 5 place so powerfully that mostly one is not even aware of what has 6 been closed off. 7 The powerful thing about discourse is that even as it privileges 8 a particular way of seeing and experiencing things, in the same 911 moment it closes off other possibilities so much that it does not 260 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
111 even occur to one that there are other possibilities there to be enter- 2 tained. For example, if one conceives of human beings as ahistori- 3 cal, differentiated, encapsulated entities, then it would seem that 4 the only means for individuals to engage with each other are 5 through the device of sending and receiving communications of 6 various kinds. In psychoanalytic theory, these mechanisms are 7 called projection, projective identification, and sometimes massive 8 projective identification; they have become essential and key to 9 understanding all clinical phenomena. The existences of these 10 mechanisms are givens in psychoanalytic discourse. There is no 1 discussion in mainstream literature about whether they exist; rather, 2 the discussion is limited to how and why they take place, and their 3 meanings and consequences. This is the dominant and prevailing 4 view not only in psychoanalysis, but also in group analysis. This 5 way of thinking also leads to the contemporary Kleinian premise 6 that all the analyst’s responses in the clinic are to be understood as 711 countertransference, that is, in some way unconsciously provoked 8 and caused by the patient’s projections into the analyst. I would 9 contend that it would be pretty much impossible for a candidate 20 training to get through a psychoanalytic training while questioning 1 the existence of these mechanisms. The trainee would be thought of 2 as delusional or just foolish, certainly as someone not able to under- 3 stand some fundamental things about the nature of human beings, 4 and, therefore, not appropriate to become a psychoanalyst. What I 511 want to make explicit here is that the workings of power privilege 6 some ways over others, and that these are hard to resist swallow- 7 ing whole. But these processes are not conscious, neither are they 8 conspiracies contrived by the ruling elites (which is not to say that 9 politicing does not take place on the committees of psychoanalytic 311 trainings). The point I want to make is that, in the main, it does not 1 even occur to many practitioners to question the taken-for-granted 2 ground that their version of psychoanalysis stands on. 3 The notion of the social unconscious questions the individualis- 4 tic premises of mainstream psychoanalysis and leads to other ways 5 of reading clinical phenomena. What is being proposed here is that 6 the analyst’s responses to the patient are going to be informed by 7 the discourses that the analyst inhabits as much as by anything 8 else. And discourses, by their nature, are out of the scope of the 911 analyst’s consciousness as much as anyone else’s. But, as I have THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS AND IDEOLOGY 261
111 been arguing, there are alternative ways of thinking about human 2 beings, ways that privilege their sociality. This way of thinking 3 provides alternative metaphors for human communication. For 4 example, in my view, Foulkes’s notion of “resonance” is a potent 5 alternative to that of “projection”. I do not wish to go into the 6 notion of resonance itself in this essay; rather, what I want to 711 emphasize is that the notion of resonance presupposes some sort of 8 connectivity between agents for the resonance to take place. It is the 9 nature of that connectivity that is being thought about by the schol- 10 ars mentioned above. And, while each gives answers that not only 1 differ but sometimes also contradict each other, what they all take 2 for granted is the connectivity itself—the key word in the previous 3 sentence being “presuppose”. This taken for granted is, of course, 4 also an expression of a particular ideology—one, it so happens, that 5 I sign up to. 6 Ultimately, there is no comfortable, ideology-free zone for the 7 analyst to retreat to, no place of scientific objectivity from which 8 they can feel confident that things are indeed as they are being 9 perceived and experienced. This, in itself, is no bad thing. As 211 Foulkes (1986, p. 129) counsels, doubt is the very basis of the atti- 1 tude of “basic modesty” that ought to be central to, and cultivated 2 by, every therapist. 3 4 5 Acknowledgement 6 I wish to thank to Earl Hopper for his thoughts on an earlier version 7 of this chapter. 8 9 30 References Q1 Althusser, L. (1969). For Marx, B. Brewster (Trans.). London: New Left 1 Books. 2 Arendt, H. (1998) [1958]. The Human Condition.Chicago, IL: Chicago 3 University Press. 4 Barthes, R. (1984). Mythologies. [[CITY]]: Paladin. 5 Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups. London: Tavistock/Routledge. 6 Bourdieu, P. (1986). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. 7 London: Routledge. 8 262 THE SOCIAL UNCONSCIOUS IN PERSONS, GROUPS, AND SOCIETIES
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111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 711 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 511 6 7 8 9 311 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 911