Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 11:36:03 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-PSY: Therapy and social passivity


Chris B writes:

>The sort of method Ilan has described on these lists is also necessarily
>delivered to and for an individual.
>
>Freud's work is also criticised from the political left as being for the
>individual alone.
>
>But is the difference that whereas psycho-educative approaches do at least
>help the individual survive as an individual, the individualist approach of
>Freud is the goal to -
>
>convert neurosis into ordinary human unhappiness.
>
>(Have I got the Freud quote right?)
>
>And do others with psychodynamic allegiances accept that that type of
>therapy is at best a mourning process which reconciles the individual to
>capitalist society as a passive entity not an active agent?
>
>Does psychotherapy with Freudian roots merely convert melancholia into
>mourning but keeps the individual passively and introspectively preoccupied
>with this for years at a time?

There's a dialectic between individual and society -- always. Language is a
very good example of this. No individual speaking a language -- no
language; and the language in every individual's brain is structurally and
syntactically complete (ie it has the potential of developing -- with the
right semantic and lexical stimulation -- into the most comprehensive and
elaborate instance of the language). Yet if there is no language community,
no individual develops language. You can't have one without the other.

Same goes for psychology.

The problem with neurosis is that it shuts off individuals from full normal
interaction with the rest of society. In this it is similar to other forms
of repression, alienation and marginalization. But it has a different cure.
As I see it neurosis is where an individual has been so pressured within an
intimate group that he (we can think of him as Bill) perceives everything
in the emotional framework of this group and fails dramatically to relate
to the larger community. This is rooted in bourgeois society by the fact
that this society is so exploitative and alienating in its social
relations, that these relations offer no relief to the neurotic individual.
In a good society, it would be very difficult indeed for the pressures of a
single intimate group to focus on a victim for sufficient time and in
sufficient concentration to produce the kind of neurosis we see all around
us today.

So if the counter-group of the intimate therapeutic relationship is able to
dissolve the mental and emotional walls (mind-forged manacles) imprisoning
an individual patient, this implies absolutely nothing as to the social and
political dynamic of Bill once he is free of this set of social chains.

While neurotic, it is possible that Bill will be socially and politically
active, but I should think it's unlikely, and this activity would in any
case be mediated through his neurotic filter, weakening any general impact
it might have. (Of course, our Bill could perhaps be a Joseph or an Adolf
or a Richard Milhouse, but that doesn't exactly disprove my point.) This
makes Chris's bother with "keeping the individual passively and
introspectively preoccupied with this for years at a time" seem unreal to
me -- unless of course the therapist is engaged in a political project
along with the individual emotional one.

Being able to see society with emotionally normal perceptions ("normal
human unhappiness") includes the normal choice between various political
positions and the choice between passivity and activity. It doesn't
(shouldn't) prejudge it. Stoic quietism is one choice among many, not the
ultimate sane approach to dealing with modern bourgeois society.

The material question of affording therapy makes Reich's mass psychology
extremely important in this connection, and the link is obvious to the
greatest contribution to the mental health of humanity being organized
action to abolish capitalist exploitation and the bourgeois social
relations that it generates and to replace it with a worldwide socialist
society built on the conscious, voluntary association of the immediate
producers of social wealth.

So -- individuals dysfunctional in our society by reason of deep-seated
emotional disturbance need help to untangle their constricting emotional
knots. Whether they get it or not is a function of the degree of democracy
in bourgeois society, so the vast majority of them won't get it. Removing
individual emotional knots does nothing to remove social chains or the
emotional pressures these generate, but neither does it disqualify our
cured Bill from taking any position he likes in relation to these social
chains, including revolutionary Marxism.

Freudianism isn't just Freud. His scientific insights into the operations
of human drives and the unconscious are generally valid to the extent that
they are true. Any social or political conclusions he himself drew from
them are just as subject to critical scrutiny as anyone else's. Newton
discovered the fundamental laws of classical mechanics but he was a raving
lunatic in questions of religion, yet his ideological supernaturalism
doesn't detract from his scientific discoveries.

I wish Chris would come out more openly and say what he's getting at. If
his questions reflect a genuine criticism of Freudianism on his part, then
he should be agitating with all guns blazing for its defeat. And if he sees
a better alternative, he should be fighting for all he's worth to establish
this as the offical method of treatment.

Cheers,

Hugh




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