{"id":123299,"date":"2018-12-03T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=123299"},"modified":"2018-12-01T14:14:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T14:14:25","slug":"how-freud-made-clear-were-nothing-but-a-band-of-murderers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/12\/how-freud-made-clear-were-nothing-but-a-band-of-murderers\/","title":{"rendered":"How Freud Made Clear We’re \u2018Nothing but a Band of Murderers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

World War I, which ended exactly 100 years ago, bolstered Freud\u2019s view that war doesn\u2019t awaken violent impulses but rather tears off the thin veil of civilization and makes us confront the savage within.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Sigmund Freud as he poses for sculptor Oscar Nemon in Vienna, 1931.
AP file photo<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Nov 2018 – <\/em>At 11 A.M. on Monday, November 11, 1918, (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), the armistice marking the end of World War I was signed in a train car in France\u2019s Compi\u00e8gne Forest. It was the first war described as \u201cthe war to end all wars.\u201d And at that moment, this seemed truly to be the case.<\/p>\n

About 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away, at 19 Berggasse in Vienna, sat a godless Jew with a bitter smile on his lips. Sigmund Freud had understood long before that all civilization was essentially a delicate piece of lacework, meticulously woven by generations upon generations in a heartrending attempt to cover the deep dark abyss of the soul. Freud was criticized and ridiculed for methodically examining the tears in that fabric \u2013 dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue, sudden bursts of savagery. The Great War was a wide enough tear to confirm his insights.<\/p>\n

>> Freud’s secret fellowship of the ring<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During the war, Freud\u2019s clinical practice dwindled. He also lost all his savings, which were linked to Austrian bonds, and barely managed to support his family. With more time on his hands, he devoted himself mainly to writing, often with fingers trembling from the cold in his unheated study. Among his writings during this period were two essays about the war. Though largely forgotten, they still pack quite a punch.<\/p>\n

In the essay \u201cThoughts for the Times on War and Death: The Disillusionment of the War,\u201d<\/a> written six months after the fighting began, Freud uncharacteristically expressed feelings of confusion, helplessness and an inability to understand the events of the day. At age 58 when the war broke out, Freud had lived through a remarkably long period of peace in Europe. In the era of \u201cthe first global village\u201d in the early 20th century, citizens of Western countries could move from one country to another or spontaneously travel to other countries without prior arrangements or special documentation. Thus, according to Freud, a new Vaterland<\/em> had arisen \u2013 one he viewed as akin to a vast museum comprising the beauty, art and history of all the nations.<\/p>\n

But then the war, which no one including Freud believed possible, broke out. \u201cWe have told ourselves, no doubt, that wars can never cease so long as nations live under such widely differing conditions, so long as the value of individual life is so variously assessed among them, and so long as the animosities which divide them represent such powerful motive forces in the mind,\u201d he wrote in his essay. But the war that was now occurring was between countries that shared a similar culture and way of life, between people of the same race, he lamented.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had expected the great world-dominating nations of white race upon whom the leadership of the human species has fallen, who were known to have world-wide interests as their concern, to whose creative powers were due not only our technical advances toward the control of nature but the artistic and scientific standards of civilization \u2013 we had expected these people to succeed in discovering another way of settling misunderstandings and conflicts of interest,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Not only were members of the white race killing one another, they were doing so with unprecedented diligence and success. Even science, which Freud as an enlightened and liberal person placed his hopes on, deeply disappointed him. All scientists did was search for more and more effective weapons. In a letter to psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salom\u00e9 during that time, Freud wrote: \u201cI have no doubt that humanity will get over this war too, but I know for certain that I and my contemporaries will see the world cheerful no more. It is too vile\u201d (quoted in Peter Gay\u2019s book, “Freud: A Life for our Time,” p. 253).<\/p>\n

Humans were never that great<\/strong><\/p>\n

Freud was profoundly saddened, but not surprised. After all, what the war seemed to have destroyed was merely an illusion. Our species didn\u2019t sink as low as we had feared, Freud consoled his readers and himself, because it had never risen as high as we had thought.<\/p>\n

We mistakenly thought human beings to be better and more moral than they really are, for the instincts of the other always remain hidden to us. Civilized society demands \u201cgood\u201d behavior and doesn\u2019t care whether the origin of this behavior is an authentic internalization of its values or just the fear of sanction from transgressing the accepted rules. The multitudes who adhere to society\u2019s requirements don\u2019t do so by nature. They\u2019re subject to continual repression of the instinct, and the great tension this creates manifests itself in neuroses and pathologies.<\/p>\n

Freud went on: \u201cThere is, however, another symptom in our fellow-citizens of the world which has perhaps astonished and shocked us no less than the descent from their ethical heights which has so greatly distressed us,\u201d he wrote, referring to the \u201cwant of insight shown by the best intellects\u201d in cooperating with the ruling powers.<\/p>\n

For example, Thomas Mann wrote in 1914: \u201cWar! It was a cleansing, a release that we experienced, and an incredible sense of hope.\u201d Stefan Zweig, who ultimately became a pacifist, also served the Austrian propaganda machine, and Rainer Maria Rilke wrote of the \u201cremote, incredible War God.\u201d<\/p>\n

This phenomenon is easy to explain, Freud said. \u201cStudents of human nature and philosophers have long taught us that we are mistaken in regarding our intelligence as an independent force and in overlooking its dependence on emotional life,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOur intellect, they teach us, can function reliably only when it is removed from the influences of strong emotional impulses; otherwise it behaves merely as an instrument of the will and delivers the inference which the will requires.\u201d Psychoanalysis shows that even the most brilliant person will act like an imbecile when wisdom collides with emotional resistance.<\/p>\n

This barb, perhaps unwittingly, is also aimed at its shooter. When war was declared, Freud himself was gripped by patriotism. \u201cFor the first time in 30 years I feel myself an Austrian,\u201d he said, and enthusiastically supported Austria\u2019s hard-line position against Serbia.<\/p>\n

Fighting for the fatherland<\/strong><\/p>\n

Freud\u2019s children apparently absorbed some of this patriotism. His three sons, Martin, Oliver and Ernst, volunteered to serve even though they weren\u2019t obligated to. They were sent to the front and were decorated. Their anxious father had a \u201cprophetic dream\u201d one night foreseeing his sons\u2019 deaths, with Martin first (though all of them survived the war). Freud later found out that on that day Martin was wounded on the Russian front, a discovery that got the master studying telepathy.<\/p>\n

Death\u2019s permanent presence in his thoughts during the war led Freud to other spectacular and depressing conclusions about human nature, which he shared in a talk at the B\u2019nai Brith lodge in Vienna on February 15, 1915. This lecture formed the basis of his essay \u201cOur Attitude Towards Death,\u201d<\/a> in which he argued that our distant ancestors\u2019 approach to death was characterized by inconsistency. Primitive man wasn\u2019t at all troubled by the death of the stranger, which was perceived as an event of no importance, nor did he hesitate to cause his death with much greater cruelty than exists in the natural world. The result of this stance can be seen in the history books, which are mainly composed of a series of killings.<\/p>\n

The attitude to the death of people who are closely connected is more complex. When primitive man saw someone close to him being killed, his very being objected. But the law of emotional ambivalence, which to this day controls our relationships with the people we love most, inserted a drop of contentment even regarding the death of a loved one. Love and hate always appear together, Freud wrote, for love is a response to the hostile impulses that we feel even toward someone close and dear to us, because even the closest person is still always a stranger.<\/p>\n

The emotional conflict regarding the death of loved ones is what gave rise to psychology and religion, Freud said. Over the grave of the loved one arose the doctrines of the soul and the belief in immortality, and that\u2019s where the guilt feelings arose that spawned the first moral imperatives. The most important prohibition generated by the awakening conscience was \u201cThou Shalt Not Kill.\u201d It was conceived from the outset as a response to the hidden hatred behind the mourning for loved ones who have died, and later expanded to be directed at strangers and eventually enemies too.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch a powerful inhibition can only be directed against an equally strong impulse,\u201d Freud wrote.\u00a0\u201cWhat no human being desires to do does not have to be forbidden, it is self-exclusive. The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like primitive man, he added, \u201cin our unconscious we daily and hourly do away with all those who stand in our way, all those who have insulted or harmed us.\u201d Our unconscious will also kill over trivial matters \u2013 it\u2019s the only punishment it can mete out. To judge by our unconscious impulses, we are \u201cnothing but a band of murderers\u201d; the only thing that has changed is our cultural and normative attitude toward death. War does not awaken violent impulses, it \u201cstrips off the later deposits of civilization and allows the primitive man in us to reappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

War cannot be abolished, Freud concluded. We must therefore recognize that in our civilized attitude toward death we are ignoring reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWere it not better to give death the place to which it is entitled both in reality and in our thoughts and to reveal a little more of our unconscious attitude towards death which up to now we have so carefully suppressed?\u201d he asked. While it may seem a step backward, at least it takes the truth into account and so makes life more bearable, he argued, summing it up thus:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe remember the old saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cSi vis pacem, para bellum.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIf you wish peace, prepare for war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe times call for a paraphrase:<\/p>\n

\u201cSi vis vitam, para mortem<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIf you wish life, prepare for death.\u201d<\/p>\n

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