Audrey Thayer Walker, MSS
Psychoanalysis and Society: Can Psychoanalysis Help to Understand Modern Conflicts? A Social Worker Speaks
Five minutes to discuss “Can Psychoanalysis Help to Understand Modern Conflicts?!” A case vignette may well be a window into this exploration. A guiding principle of social work training is “start where your client is.” So here we are in Washington, DC, the anniversary week of 9/11! Five years ago on 9/11, at about 9:25 a.m., I looked out of my office window. I remember seeing the streams of people leaving offices, silently and relentlessly headed home. I remember the smoke from the Pentagon across the Potomac, the waiting room radio blaring a shocked announcer's voice saying that the two hits (New York) had become three (the Pentagon) and another plane crashed in Pennsylvania. It was headed, supposedly, for the White House (a few blocks away from my office)!
Horror. Numbness. Fear. Rage. What are we going to "do"—we dare not think!?!
Boundaries blurred: patients and therapists huddled together around the waiting room radio, immobilized, wanting to go home but frozen. People left—a psychiatrist was staying—the George Washington University Hospital ER, across the street, might need him. I had scheduled patients/clients all day. Interestingly, all kept their appointments.
Just like my clients, who have experienced extraordinary physical and psychological assaults and disproportionately utilize their resources and energy for defensive purposes, so is Society likely to do so. Can we face that our illusion of safety, mastery and control, in relation to the rest of the world, is just an illusion? What will take its place? What will be the future destructive reenactments? We in the psychoanalytic community know a great deal about such dynamics. Sometimes, in an attempt to resolve conflict, we unconsciously, pre-consciously even employ defensive psychic mechanisms that create that which we truly fear!
Our professions have taught us to ask questions. How did the US get into a war in Iraq? How did the assault of those four planes become the US attack on Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, and Iraq, and alienate the US from most of the Middle East and from many of its allies? What were, and are, we thinking: what happened to our capacity to think and then speak that which we thought? Who are "we"—one amorphous whole, or many diverse subcultures, fractured, polarized, and/or unified? Where were (and are) the leaders? Who were they? Around whom did Society organize? Psychoanalysis has taught us to talk, explore, think and even speak. DC's psychoanalyst, Justin Frank, author of the controversial, Bush on the Couch, shared publicly his thoughts, informed by his psychoanalytic training and experience. Otto Kernberg developed his paper referencing the narcissistic and/or pathologically narcissistic leader.
Freud also had some thoughts! He said history and context are important: who is doing what to whom under what circumstances! He understood man's capacity to regress to primitive states under pressure: He understood that members of a group could project wishes and disavowed aspects of themselves onto an idealized leader, regress, and allow that leader to think and/or act for them. He also knew the capacity of man's mind to intellectualize, to rationalize, and to think, the latter providing hope, and he knew that limits, structure, superego could be useful in channeling the primitive energy of affects into thinking, altruism, even sublimations. He understood primitive affects push toward action, gratification, and that the tension between the impulse seeking gratification and civilization (the external and institutionalized superego representing limits for the supposed greater good) is necessary for survival and growth.
I have listed several of Freud papers relevant to today's topic:
"The Future of Illusion," 1927
"Civilization and Its Discontents," 1930
"Totem and Taboo," 1912, 1913
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 1921
I am struck with the brilliance and insight of Freud's thoughts, especially within the context of his times and how these insights are so relevant to today. He wrote of hope (life) as well as destruction (death). No wonder my social work profession and my own Smith College School for Social Work found such grounding in psychoanalytic theory.
The United States is at war, a polarizing war! However, we in DC experienced the Pennsylvania plane that crashed on 9-11-01—the one where people came together, collaborated, and died, sooner rather than later, for the greater good—we experienced this as heroism. What would Freud say about this?