Civilising and De–Civilising Influences, Refugees and the Disincentives Towards Relating Humanely to Our Global Relations
A version of this paper was presented at the Melbourne meeting of the Australian Association of Group Psychotherapist on 18/11/2017.
It was also presented as a contribution to a workshop conducted under the auspices of the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists on 4/8/2018 entitled ‘THINKING, CONNECTING AND HOPE IN THE FACE OF PROFOUND THREATS’, the aim of which was to consider the experience and societal response to refugees.
Abstract
This paper will begin with some reflections upon the profound global, political, economic and societal changes and consequential stresses that are currently part of contemporary life. The background is to consider the plight of refugees and the challenges involved in addressing compassionately this growing problem in the twenty-first century.
It will include a consideration of the work of Norbert Elias in the twentieth century, hearkening back to Freud and looking forwards to the present state globally with more and more developed countries withdrawing from interdependence and choosing island state functions and directions. It includes a commentary and analysis of some of the implications for us all in the development of social and cultural hierarchies associated with gender, race, sexuality and class particularly from psychoanalytic and group analytic perspectives.
Introduction
There are numerous global catastrophes that we have sustained and could sustain into the future. These have been so far largely natural and geophysical but as we all know humanity has developed the capability to surpass nature in this arena.
Bill McGuire is Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College, London and a leading vulcanologist. He has said that nothing lasts forever and that in some five billion years when our sun becomes a red giant and swells it will have consumed the earth. But before then he suggests that Climate Change has the capacity to profoundly de-stabilise our geo-physical environment and trigger vast disruptive and destructive events in the earth’s crust (2012). Former Cambridge Cosmologist Brandon Carter, an Australian and international expert on “Black Holes” and colleague of the late Stephen Hawking, considers that in all probability we as a race are facing a doomsday phenomenon in as little as a few centuries (1983). Later refinements of his theories mathematically suggest there is a 95% chance that humans will be extinct within the next few thousand years: the precise number varying according to the mathematical model employed. We should not be surprised that instead of facing such possibilities humans have created alogical ways to avoid thinking about such matters including the pursuit of certain orthodox religious beliefs and scientific scepticism. Others envisage rescue from expansion into the outer reaches of space!
According to the United Nations the number of “international migrants” living abroad worldwide was 258 million in 2017 which is a 49% increase from the year 2000 (2018). In 2017 according to the UNHCR (2018) the number of “forcibly displaced people” globally was 68.5 million (2015). Of this 25.4 million were “international refugees” fleeing persecution and another 40 million at least are “internally displaced” (under the Geneva Convention only those forced to flee and leave their country are defined as refugees). 3.1 million are defined as “asylum seekers”. As I have written in a recent published paper on the nature of truth (2017) these terms migrant, refugee and asylum seeker have political connotations and are used according to the discourse to structure thinking. Suffice to say these figures have increased significantly in only a few years. In 2015 and 2016 more than 1.2 million unarguable refugees entered Europe. In 2015 Angela Merkel opened the borders and allowed approximately 1 million refugees to enter and stay. During the October 2016 German election campaign in which she and her party were successful she openly said she would make the same decision again! However, of course her position as leader with authority is more recently under challenge by the “alt right”.
This paper owes its rather strained and ambivalent birth to multiple and diverse mothers and fathers. Some of these parents include discussions in a monthly AAGP reading and discussion group in Melbourne (and I refer here particularly to colleagues Mary Good and Vicki Zola). Also included here are experiences preceding, upon and following the election of Donald Trump as the US President late in 2016, attendance with colleagues at the 17th Group-Analytic Society International Symposium in Berlin in August 2017, local and international politics, personal readings, discussions with friends and my wife.
I intend to take the listener through some of my ideas and their development but even as I say this I realise that much of the following owes a great deal to the minds of others and in particular Norbert Elias someone whom I have come to see as a giant of twentieth century sociology and thinking. For some years some of us have been exploring what the term “social unconscious” means and its development in the literature and origins as far back as the pioneering work of Trigant Burrow early in the 20th century followed by S. H. Foulkes but most cogently by English Group Analysts such as Brown(), Dalal(), Hopper, et al. I will return to the nature of the Social Unconscious later in this paper. These studies took on a more political meaning particularly as we explored the ideological movement of “Neoliberalism” amongst other areas. Neoliberalism is a term that refers to a political force or ideology that began to take hold of Western governments and economies some thirty years ago or more. It has been powerfully influential and transformed fundamentally how those with economic power negotiated responsibilities to society. Neoliberalism developed a power which is still extant. Some of its characteristics were related to a so-called liberalisation of economic principles including idealisation of privatisation, economic austerity, deregulation and free trade. A major feature has included the reduction of government spending allocated to the social needs of the impoverished or less able amongst us. Some say that neoliberalism ushered in conditions allowing the Global Financial Crisis to develop from its nidus in the US in 2007 into 2008.
What I want to emphasise here at this stage is a way of thinking about human and social and societal experiences and phenomena from a group standpoint or even a large group standpoint. At the same time implicit in what I have just stated is a desire to move beyond the psychology of the individual not to replace it but to transcend the individual. Implicit in taking an interest in groups is, or perhaps should be, a valuing of more than the individual or singleton. Freudian psychology from quite early on, at least, was an instinct led means of understanding the human condition in the individual and it came to be transcended gradually by object relations psychology both from the perspective of an internal world but also a relational world such as represented by Winnicott and his statement that (approximately) “there is no such thing as a baby, only a mother and baby”(1960). The importance of the environment was more and more emphasised by many psychoanalysts and psychotherapists but in some ways such developments were never completely accepted and there are/were pockets of acceptance versus resistance to what came to be known as a relational psychoanalytic approach. This seems to have grown globally but how it is expressed in detail is a more local matter.
My thinking about these matters was crystallised by the Australian political situation with, in recent years, the rapid turnover of Prime Ministers and governments and the struggle for power by the main political contenders. An aspect of this has been the apparently and so-called “focus-group” led creation of policy aimed at ensuring as much as possible election of a particular party in government and a populist- led political influence. Much of this seems to involve a searching out of the electorate to find a position for a political party wherever it may choose to locate itself on the dimension from extreme left wing to extreme right wing. Anxiety can seem to be generated in these groups when little difference seems to exist between the major contenders and smaller single issue parties have been born along the way. This anxiety may have to do with the pursuit of power and sustaining a hold upon it rather than a genuine concern for the nation.
The other major stimulus of thinking was the American election campaign of 2015 and 2016 with the excruciating and repugnant, to my mind, presentation of the Republicans with Donald Trump associated with them. I say associated with them because many would claim he is not and has never been a true Republican but that is another story. I don’t necessarily want to become too focused on the politics but mention how my thinking was stimulated. We read and heard much about Trump’s personality and most of us viewed him, and who can forget the events leading up to the election such as the parading of a vile and sexist, exploitative and abusive discourse? This discourse was exploitative of not just the Obamas and the Clintons, but women, blacks, other minority groups and the poor of America who have been led to believe they too can “live the American dream”. It is true that after the Global Financial Crisis, which began in the US, Obama can be seen to have stumbled over how to answer the Wall Street influence represented by Goldman Sachs et al, which nearly brought the global economy to collapse. As a result the poor in the US could perhaps be forgiven for wanting something vastly different. Slowly we came to hear and ourselves use the word “narcissistic” increasingly to describe a personality. Indeed, the term “narcissistic personality disorder” was used until one of the originators or designers of DSM IV, Dr. Allen Francis, came out and denied the term would apply to Trump (2017). It seems that we have found our attention turned to this sort of political leader over recent times although they have no doubt always been there, e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Idi Amin, Marcos, Putin, and so on with each not being comparable necessarily with any other except in terms of possessing some degree of maybe what some would arguably call evil. This paper, in part, represents a struggle to think about what else was going on other than a personal or individual psychopathological condition or maybe what we might call traditionally a personality disorder. Be that as it may, there seems to be some use in these terms as we have struggled to come to terms with a replacement of a discourse arguably more based on care, dignity and concern for the other including the least fortunate with a neoliberal and greed-led example with nepotism and enhancement of private wealth so prominent and indeed gaudily displayed shamelessly.
Freud and Civilisation
As with most matters psychoanalytic it is customary to begin with Freud and his ideas. In 1930 Freud’s work “Civilisation and its Discontents” was published (1930). In his early work such as the “Three Essays” (1905) emphasis was placed on social, educational and civilising influences in holding back and reining in the instincts. Later though he gave more emphasis to what he called “organic repression” and inherited influences. Although again he seemed to move back and forth on this matter especially early on. Ultimately, however, the superego and guilt are proposed as the final arbiters, so to speak, on these matters. He wrote of “happiness” and asks why is it so hard for humans to find and maintain such a state? He concluded that there are 3 reasons. Firstly, the superior power of nature and secondly, what he called the “feebleness of our own bodies” and he concluded we can do little to completely offset these factors. But the third is referred to as “the inadequacy of the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state and society” and what he calls the “social source of suffering”.
He suggested we like to consider that we have power in this area but that also our misery may be substantially attributable to civilisation. Freud described how civilisation proscribes rules regulating social relationships including sexual connections, family and nation state membership. These exist to protect us from the arbitrary wants of the self-seeking individual or group. This development of justice for all, however, also constrains the individual. He suggested that sublimation has been required by the demands of civilisation. He described that the development of families allowed sexual and other satisfactions to be available within limits as opposed to spontaneous and arbitrary taking as happenstance such satisfactions. He is recalling his earlier work on the primal horde in Totem and Taboo here (1919). I will remind you of the primal father, with his absolute power including over the women, being defeated by the sons and a group or “band of brothers” coming to replace him with totemic rules introduced to maintain order.
He explored the role of aggression and the Christian demand that we love our neighbours as we do ourselves. Of course, as he argued, this imperative points to the basic, but often hidden, desire to exterminate the other. He mentions how cultural groups allow their members to express aggression to intruders or strangers and that what binds a group together in belongingness is also the importance of having others to turn hate towards. We can also think of the elaborate rituals in allowing new members into our own professional groups. Freud arrived at a sort of conclusion that if our sexual instinct and our aggressive instinct are inhibited or reined in by civilisation it is no surprise many of us are at best ambivalent toward civilisation. And yet civilisation, according to Freud, is the social context or arena in which the instinct to survive, to love and to live (eros) is competing with the death instinct (thanatos). His final words in this area are to return to the importance of the superego and how it being set up within us as an agency of internal control harnesses our aggression. An internal agency, the superego, is set up to largely hopefully replace more primitive and punitive external influences and makes itself known to us all as guilt which Freud sees as the source of much of our unhappiness but at the same time the price for survival.
Elias and Civilising Processes
Norbert Elias, originally from Germany and of Jewish background, like Freud, migrated to the United Kingdom, in his case, in 1935. He published over many years in Germany and in the U.K. but remains best known for his early, extensive and profound literary work entitled “The Processes of Civilisation” which he added to later. It was published obscurely and in German in 1939 as the Second World War began and seems to have remained virtually undiscovered until it was reprinted in English in 1978 (1939, 1978).
The work is a magnum opus and examined with great detail and scholarship the social and structural background to the development of societies in Germany, France and to a lesser extent England, Italy and Spain. His attention to detail was profound. At times he has been variously described as a sociologist, philosopher and historian and in fact he first completed a medical degree. He described, with an informed historical background, how a substrate began to form in these future nation states from early medieval times, say about the year 900 till early in the twentieth century. There were differences between these developing nations or proto-nations growing out of idiosyncratic histories, pressures and local influences. He examined how important the behavioural and social habitus was, as he called it, from which each future nation grew. His term habitus really is a reference to culture and characteristic social behaviours of a group.
For example, what ultimately came to be the French people or nation was highly influential across Europe particularly Germany. In Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was considered the height of refinement to use French words in one’s speech and literature and the German language was to some extent considered crude. There were other differences such as Germany’s Frederick the Great in 1780 who lamented the poor quality of some German writing and claimed that the inferior literature was characterised by accounts and stories in drama centred upon the lives of the vulgar and the poor along with the nobility. He quoted an example of the primitive, according to him, plays of Shakespeare whom he considered ill-educated and contrasted them with what he described as the superior form of German drama that he wanted to flourish confined to the lives of the aristocracy. This German literature and drama, however, was not able to be entered into or enjoyed by the ordinary people in contrast, I think, to the availability and clear popularity in London and England across a breadth of social classes of Shakespeare’s works (2012).
Also, it was the case in the 1700’s that in Germany inheritance of titles and wealth was everything and much attention was paid to lineage. Elias saw this aspect as continuing into the era of the National Socialists in Germany in the twentieth century when racial background so devastatingly came to the fore.
He described how there were differences between the French and the Germans in the way the bourgeoisie or middle class made its way respectively. In France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the nobility eschewed administrative and judicial roles by royal charter. This allowed the development of a class of informed lower level groups (which would become the bourgeoisie) to develop skills and aspirations that when the time was right was able to find violent expression in the Revolution of the late 1790’s. This meant that the courtly behaviour of the nobility was known and taken on by the middle classes and developed into the further flowering of French and Parisian culture we see today with much attention paid to manners, etiquette, fashion etc. Whereas in Germany the nobility maintained a hold on matters of state powerfully and the middle class were not initiated into the world of the court in the same way as the French and the barriers were thus greater for the bourgeoisie to move upwards. Elias’ point here is not so much to speak in absolutes or profound differences but nonetheless noticeable differences that were reflected in the development of behaviours, habits, manners etc.
He seems best known for his detailed descriptions and investigations of customary and domestic ways of living and behaving: habitus. There is a certain irritation in his later writings and interviews for being known chiefly in the literary world generally for these publications. He would seem to want to have been widely remembered for his more complex theories of the processes of the development of civilisation and later writings to do with symbols and their significance. These early descriptions of his are notable to us for their depictions of what we would now see as coarse, and what we may also find humorous, descriptions of ways of living.
For example, some of the sources he used included texts and writings of medieval French, English, Spanish, Italian and German sources that were relatively obscure and not readily available at the time of his writing. These included the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Tannhauser of Germany, John Russel of England, numerous poems, paintings and prints and much more. I will present briefly here some examples of what I am referring to:
Tannhauser of Germany for his “Hofzucht” or “Courtly Manners” from the middle of the thirteenth century: “A man of refinement should not slurp from the same spoon with somebody else”, “If a man wipes his nose on his hand at table because he knows no better, then he is a fool, believe me.” “If a man snorts like a seal when he eats, as some people do, and smacks his chops like a Bavarian yokel, he has given up all good breeding.” These were rules for the behaviour of knights living at court as opposed to the “coarse manners” of the peasant class.
Erasmus of Holland and his “On Civility in boys” and “De Civilitate morum puerilium” both in 1530 were profoundly popular and re-printed many times: “If a serviette is given, lay it on your left shoulder or arm. If you are seated with people of rank, take off your hat and see that your hair is well combed. Your goblet and knife, duly cleansed, should be on the right, your bread on the left. Some people put their hands in the dishes the moment they have sat down. Wolves do that. It is a good thing to wait a short while before eating so that the boy grows accustomed to tempering his affects.”
Elias described numerous examples to support his conclusions that societal standards for table manners and many other forms of behaviour were constantly evolving. Treatises, such as those described already were written, distributed and published setting down how people of higher breeding, be they princes or noblemen and noblewomen, should behave. Further, such changes developed in achieving more detail and differentiation from the other classes.
The earlier ways of living from the early middle ages on were developed from more primitive courts where there were free knights who had great individual power and were feudal lords. This evolved slowly into Courtly societies with greater expression of politeness and courtesy. He described how this was called “Courtoise” and evolved slowly into “Civilite”. Courtoise is the precursor of what we would call courtesy nowadays. Civilite involved a more refined degree of social accountability. Civilite came to be replaced by “Civilisation” and the French were the vanguard (according to accounts from Voltaire) of such developments. This word “Civilisation” was a reference to the importance for the French nobility of a very high level of politeness. He traced interestingly the origin of the words culture and civilisation from their early beginnings. The word “civilisation” was coined by the French in about 1774, becoming a verb at about the same time, in order to reflect the shift from the qualities of a polite and respectful individual in the courtly context to a societal and social development across a nation.
This came to pervade the Bourgeoisie as the middle class came to be formed as an entity quite apart from the upper classes especially in France. Not only eating habits but language was permeated by means of expressing civility and differentiation. What Elias stressed was that over time a consciousness around such habits faded and became unconscious. The modern reasons for table manners etc often are said to have to do with hygiene but in the middle ages this was never a concern and instead it had to do with “courtoise” and being attuned to respectability and politeness. He comes to say increasingly that these accounts and practises of habitus were slowly integrated more and more across nations and social classes at least in the West.
Another example of eating habits evolving is how early on a whole animal that had been cooked on the fire or a spit was placed on the table and everyone would descend upon it as in the so-called Great Halls of Royal castles but that over time the carving of meat became an honoured role and pieces of meat were presented in a dressed fashion. In courts where knights and the warrior class had the power, knives were an instrument of power and allowed aggression to be enacted at the whim of the knight including killing. The use of the knife by knights and the warrior class signified how violence and satisfaction of desire, including sexual was arbitrary and could be taken whenever one chose, at least by those who had power. Slowly this practice evolved to the point that the knife was presented at the table as a more peaceful instrument and associated with all sorts of appropriate sanctions in terms of use. He described how increasingly over hundreds of years “affect control” developed. For example, Calviac, 1530: “If you pass someone a knife, take the point in your hand, and offer him the handle, for it would not be polite to do otherwise.” Here we can see how such reminders to be “polite” are also a hint at what went before in earlier times, that is, unguarded hostility. The use of the fork dates from about the eleventh century in Venice and even earlier in Greece but was not more accepted for some hundreds of years. In the use of the fork Elias described how it came to be considered “barbaric” and dirty to use one’s fingers to eat because the fingers became covered in gravy and juices. He described such changes as shifts in the “drive- and affect-economy”. Feelings of distaste came to be associated in the later centuries with behaviour that in the middle ages would not have caused concern. Feelings of shame or embarrassment developed where previously there were none!
Natural bodily functions were also described in terms of changing “habitus”. Erasmus in 1530: “It is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating…a well-bred person should always avoid exposing without necessity the parts to which nature has attached modesty. If necessity compels this, it should be done with decency and reserve, even if no witness is present. For angels are always present…” And again: “The sound of farting especially of those who stand on elevated ground, is horrible. One should make sacrifices with the buttocks firmly pressed together.” Elias adds that only psychoanalysis can lay claim to understanding the origins of such behaviours, drives and desires as proceeding from infancy and that in the course of development they are repressed into the unconscious.
Again, when it comes to the sexual, as with all other aspects of human behaviour, social pressures have moulded behaviour as a result of shame and embarrassment. He described how weddings in ritualistic ways allow what might otherwise be shameful to be engaged with and socially allowable. We can think here of the practice of the groom placing the garter on his bride’s thigh. Examples: Erasmus: “When you undress, when you get up, be mindful of modesty, and take care not to expose to the eyes of others anything that morality and nature require to be concealed.” What early on, say in the middle ages was a lack of modesty, slowly came to be replaced by inhibitions about walking through the streets naked or semi-naked and the same with respect to bathing habits. Elias spoke of what he called a “conspiracy of silence” in the 18th and 19th centuries around sexual matters where previously there was none.
What he made clear was that along with his detailed accounts of socially evolving ways of living characterised by splits between what is and is not appropriate, the personality and what we might call the internal psychological structure of people also changed or evolved. He presented (p.185) how Freud had described the superego was formed as a result of parental and social sanctions against certain taboos and refers to some of Freud’s earlier work, e.g., Totem and Taboo. Elias is saying that the split that occurs in psychic structure reflects the growing split in social structures out there and that they are constantly evolving.
He described from about the 16th century onwards how, as he termed it, there developed a slow “psychologisation and rationalisation…and a muting of drives”. He meant that in the court life initially, but soon spreading to the bourgeoisie and beyond, there developed an acute and refined awareness of what was required to ingratiate oneself to others. There are descriptions by La Bruyere in the 17th century of the details of it being necessary to observe the facial expressions of others, how long one was kept waiting, expressions of subtle generosity or disdain and so on. Elias describes that instead of the sword and armour one needed to develop psychological insight in relation to oneself and others in the court to survive and prosper. All of this sounds to me very much like accounts of international diplomacy with its guardedness and janus – faced smilingness behind which hides a ruthless determination to prosper at the expense of others or, dare I say “make a deal”.
What he called the “Sociogenesis of the State” is relevant to mention here. As has already been said he was very interested in how societies or “civilisations” developed and used as a basis historical accounts. In brief he described how in at least Western Europe some one thousand years ago smaller warlords came to control smaller areas of territory. In time, however, as it inevitably comes to pass, those with power came to see the need to expand. The stimulus for this was often growth in population and the need to feed the group spurring on aggressive take-overs or wars. Inevitably some won and some lost so that over time the expansion of control over progressively larger and larger areas occurred by fewer and fewer. One of the means of achieving this was by land control and the creation of monopolies that prevented independence from those with power. This evolved in time to include taxation and military control. He described how, as powerful monopolies developed, in order to maintain their power they increasingly depended upon others and that these others also depended on the monopolistic powers that have been accrued so that a sort of mutual dependence developed. Also, that along with such accumulation of power the greater the differentiation of dependent functionaries and diversity. He stressed that such changes took centuries quite often rather than years. What developed was a shift from relatively smaller war-lords and their petty authority to larger Royal Court authority with the King having control, assisted by the nobility and hence influencing vast areas. The King was able to assist the nobility to limit the bourgeoisie whose growing power was a threat. But in addition to these gradual moves towards statehood, away from the feudal system, ways of relating, or habitus, evolved as already described in the foregoing. This meant that more restraint was needed in interacting with others and having one’s needs met. This became particularly so, for example, in the court of Louis XIV. Put simply, instead of forcefully taking what one wanted because one could, all sorts of regimens around etiquette and politeness developed.
Elias is talking about how constraints from the social need to be with others were gradually transformed into self-constraints. So that the greed, lust, hunger and so on instead of immediately seeking relief by assertion of might or power came to be progressively replaced by an ability to bear inner tension, e.g., knives on the table etc. None of this is planned but we can understand the mechanism after the fact. Farhad Dalal (1998) has quoted an example Elias provided that is helpful. If you are playing chess you will understand that as soon as a move is made, let us say, a pawn moves ahead two spaces, then almost imperceptibly this limits the moves available to the adversary. As the game goes on you will understand that constraints are progressively increased on both parties until check-mate or stale-mate occurs. In the same way as “civilisation” develops, what Elias called “chains of interdependency”, increase in length and complexity. What I am trying to convey is that at the societal and individual level the dependence works in both directions. Each needs the other and there are complex rules governing these connections that include politeness, professional etiquette and hopefully mutual respect.
Elias stressed again and again that the changes in the social systems in a coarse or general fashion which include, for example, table manners etc. or in other words habitus, are intimately associated with the development of a complex “sociogenetic-psychological apparatus of individual self-control” which deepens and is unconscious. As self-control becomes more embedded it contributes to social and inner stability. This also requires what he calls the “monopolisation of physical force” or areas of a society that are sanctioned to control or punish others in prescribed ways. These are what can be called “civilising influences” or in Elias’ terms “Civilising Processes”.
At the heart of his comprehensive work is a theory that lays emphasis on an intimate and inseparable linkage of sociogenetic and psychogenetic forces that move forwards when civilisations are developing progressively or we perhaps could say successfully. Dalal, a previous Melbourne Freud Conference lecturer, has described (1998), how Elias provided a model for considering and elaborating the concept of the social unconscious which is really about how the unconscious is permeated by the social. Freud gave us instincts, Klein and others gave us infantile phantasy as an expression of instincts and the concept and importance of inner object relations and slowly there continued moves toward where Elias has taken us and beyond. If there is any central or axial aspect of Elias’ work it would be I think the importance for humans of interdependence. As Dalal and others have described, the term “figuration” is Elias’ attempt to move beyond the artificial separateness between the individual and society (1987). Every individual is a part of the group and every group is composed of individuals and the system is interwoven with interdependencies that involve and express power differentials. Figuration is like the link between figure and ground, they move back and forth in our minds but are always present together.
In his “Postscript” of 1968 (1978), he ultimately proposed a model for the first time based on empirical research as follows: “a theory of civilising processes showing the possible connections between long term changes in human personality structures toward a consolidation and differentiation of affect controls and the long term changes in the figurations that people form with one another towards a higher level of differentiation and integration” and we could add a lengthening of the chains of interdependency. He continued to write and contribute into his old age until he died in 1990.
Civilising and De-Civilising Processes
Along with the concept of the Processes of Civilisation naturally we could say there might exist Processes of De – Civilisation. Elias himself foreshadowed that something was awry in Germany at the time of the 1939 publication and indeed he had by then left Germany to live in England like Freud. While he did speak of how the direction of civilising processes could be reversed it was largely left to others to consider could the process go in the other direction and what would be the parameters or visible signs that this was happening? Throughout his life he was able to contribute powerfully academically because of his being active and cognitively intact into his 90’s. Of local interest is Stephen Mennell (1990) who amongst others has studied and written about such matters. I have been in email communication with him. He was a Professor of Sociology at Monash University in 1990 when he first published on De-Civilising Processes and subsequently and remains Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. Numerous possible candidates for a period of de-civilisation have been put forward and these have included the collapse of the Chou Empire in China between 400 and 200 B.C., the collapse of the Roman Empire, the “Thirty Year War” in Germany (1618 – 1648) which required several generations for recovery to occur, the Jewish Holocaust, and Stalinist times in Russia. Mennell’s conclusion is that the clearest cases of de-civilisation require shifts over at least three generations (1990). More recently in 2015 Mennell (2015) has suggested, particularly in the U.S., the rise of right-wing economic policy and I think this could also be linked with Neoliberalism. He makes an aside comment here about the gun lobby and its influence. Essentially these studies are about long-term movements socially and individually.
[Mennell and colleagues were responsible for the publication of Elias’ entire works in hard back under the auspices of the University College Dublin Press.]
There are several features that Mennell (1990) and others have described as reflective of a period of de-civilisation. These include a long-term rise in the danger level, breaking links and shorter lines of dependence, re-emergence of violence and unpredictability, loss of mutual identification, lessened restraint of aggressive impulses, changes in personality formation and increasing fantasy content of modes of knowledge. Elias would have included the term changes in drive-affect regulation, a reference to the regulation of aggression, desire and mood which in de-civilising times would allow less self-constraint. Another feature is the implication that we would not necessarily be aware of such developments, that such profound societal movements are not chosen or planned.
Newer Models
Perhaps it is possible at this point to arrive at a condensation of matters? As I said earlier our theoretical understanding has evolved from a purely classical psychoanalytical approach so that a much more object relations view has come to prevail even in quite orthodox, by contemporary standards, psychoanalytic circles. When it comes to large group, societal and global matters we need something else as previous models are insufficient as far as I can see. We can talk for example, of how a society or even a nation has yet to move along the developmental line (think Anna Freud) far enough to achieve maturity and independence. We can consider that separation – individuation (1975) is incomplete and we can consider all manner of infantile ways of relating in understanding global politics. Phillip Stokoe at the recent Freud Conference in 2018 in Melbourne reminded us and articulated the Kleinian model of splitting, denial, projection and projective identification applied to organisational contexts and beyond. This is fair enough and useful but for me it can feel like we are trying to shoe-horn something into a space in which it does not fit: infants are not groups. We need models, and all of us come to be schooled in different ways quite early in our professional lives with respect to certain models that our teachers or our field of work seems to allow.
The medical model is useful up to a point. When the surgeon opens up the abdomen of a patient with localised pain in the right iliac fossa he or she will turn to a model that allows pathology to be anticipated and resolved. The surgeon will not think of the family constellation the patient is from or the conflicted personal circumstances of the patient even though a goodly proportion of “appendicectomies” reveal no pathology (ie. they are not suffering from appendicitis). Someone working with another model may learn that the patient’s father died of colon cancer which presented with abdominal pain, for example, and understand a guilt identification on the part of the patient when working in the field of liaison psychiatry. Models have limitations even though they are useful. When it comes to the societal stage or level something else is needed other than even a relatively evolved but individually based model to understand such dynamics.
Elias, many years ago, gave us a new model, that of sociogenesis preceding or at the very least going hand in hand with the psychogenetic model we all know. His figurational model of the individual and the social, being on an ever – interacting dimension of engagement is very valuable, i.e., there is no such thing as an individual and also that society is composed of individuals.
Lyn Layton from the 1990’s on has explored (2007, 2009), from the standpoint of the US context and that of Relational Psychoanalysis, the social and the intra-psychic. She has used her experience in private psychoanalytic practice, a strong literature background and also as editor of a number of psychoanalytic publications, to contribute and define a useful model.
As a result of social, cultural and political forces, “cultural hierarchies”, as she terms them, have been powerfully formed in the US, and by implication, Western society. The term cultural hierarchy refers to dimensions of culture that come to be laden with worth or value so that where we are placed on such dimensions as gender, race, class and sexuality (homo versus hetero), for example, will determine objective and subjective sense of worth. She has described how the neoliberal economic and political ideology that has come to pervade our nations has brought about “neoliberal subjectivities”. By this she means that the results of neoliberalism are internalised by us all. As mentioned earlier in this paper reduction of social investment, diminished care for the impoverished, over-valuing high incomes, manic activity, materialism and in general focusing on one’s personal wealth and well-being and that of those very close to us, are powerful forces in structuring our subjective experience, dare I say, our inner worlds. As she says: “When public institutions abandon their responsibilities toward the citizenry…there is a pressure to create ever more individualistic identities that repudiate the vulnerable and needy parts of the self.” She also describes how conscious and unconscious forces are in operation serving to strengthen the splits already produced as a result of cultural hierarchies. The unconscious contribution she has called “normative unconscious processes”. For example, shame and embarrassment can strengthen such splits. Those on the lower or disadvantaged side are encouraged to believe, at least subliminally, they are unworthy in some primary way, for example, the plight of indigenous peoples across the globe. She also speaks of the power of “distinction” in the sense that groups come to fetishize or overvalue difference. I thought here of the pursuit of so-called fine dining, or airport lounges or club memberships or clothing in fashion and all manner of separating ourselves from the masses.
These values come to pervade our experience both as people and socio-culturally so that splits develop along lines of gender, race, colour, class, sexuality and I would say education. For example, in terms of gender, for a long time and still, although it is arguably under some challenge perhaps, males occupied absolutely positions of power and superiority and were more able to express their sense of agency. Correspondingly, women characteristically tended toward a gender norm emphasising care-giving, dependency and perhaps passivity. When these typically are expressed she may lose much in terms of opportunities to be able or agentic in some contexts. Of course, there were exceptions to these stereotypes. Layton’s point is that each side of the split loses profoundly and is limited by such a gender hierarchy. Classically the male or macho stereotype is about power, control, effectiveness, and a denial of dependency and inter-dependency and he thus loses much in this regard. What is lost on both sides is a vital aspect of our humanity. The role of one contributes strongly to what is possible for the other in terms of identity. To use Layton’s language and the title of a 2009 paper (2009): “Who’s Responsible? Our Mutual Implication in Each Other’s Suffering.” The same applies to hierarchies along class, race, colour, sexuality (hetero versus homo), educational advantage etc. The final lynch-pin in it all is that cultural hierarchies confer power.
Concluding Thoughts
I made mention earlier on of the concept of the social unconscious. A deep exploration of this is beyond the scope of this paper but it has been extensively explored by group-analytic and group preoccupied theoreticians for decades (2001). Very simply such a model states that we are all pervaded by unconscious forces operating at a social level whatever our cultural or social context. A definition: the social unconscious refers to the existence of restraints and constraints of social, cultural and communication arrangements of which people are unaware. It includes anxieties, fantasies, myths, defences and object relations including political influences which have been co-constructed unconsciously by members of groups (2014). The concept of a social unconscious is clearly relevant and of use in considering how individual identities are developed in a social world. I hope all the foregoing helps deepen our awareness of the importance of these matters for us all.
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Paul Coombe
pdcoombe@bigpond.net.au