[Chris:] What I want to do today. I got some pens, today, which is great. Ah, that's wonderful, ah, of course, they don't work. [LAUGHTER] Ah, that's just... okay, got one that works. I meant to bring my own, but I forgot, and somebody's used the wrong kind of pen on here, so you can't rub that off. That was probably in desperation. Thank you. Erm, I have a pause dubbed, you know in comedy shows, they dub laughter, well, I have a pause dubbed. Makes me think the things I'm saying are very clever. Okay. Erm, right, what I want to do this week, is to go on to the next er, work of Freud's, that follows after erm, group psychology, or rather to the next two, because I'm gonna back these two books together for, hi there,, erm gonna back these two books together, because as we'll see, they, they really deal with the same subject. Or at least they start, both books really start with the same issue, and the issue in question is in many ways, well, you could argue that it was in many ways fundamental to the social sciences. And, and the issue is, question is is what is often called a problem of social order. The problem of order. What this means is... it's the question of how is society possible. Why do people cooperate? Why isn't there total chaos, why doesn't everybody pursue their own self interest at the expense of everybody else, reducing life to a, a state of chaotic erm er, conflict of individuals against each other. This is what is normally called the problem of social order, and of course it's been around in philosophy and, and social sciences, really since the beginning, and er, some of the greatest and earliest works of er, social philosophy like Plato's Republic, are really in part about this er question. How do you, how do you er, create er social, social order. It often leads on to more prescriptive utopian ideas about what would the ideal society be like. But, erm, at the initial stage, the problem of order, really goes no further than asking a factual question. How is society possible? How in existing societies, does order emerge, because, clearly it does. Now, as I said, there'd been various answers er, to this, throughout history, one of the most interesting and significant as far as we're concerned, in studying Freud and the social sciences, was er, that of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes, whose dates are fifteen eighty eight to sixteen seventy nine, can you read that? Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who er, wrote a famous book called Leviathan in which he explored this er fundamental question of social order. Hobbes conceived of what he called a state of nature. This was in fact, the state in which he thought er animals er existed, and it was the condition to which he believed humans beings would be reduced, were it not for the mechanisms that maintain social order. The state of nature,ac according to the most memorable phrase in the book, er, made life nasty, brutish and short. Because in Hobbes' view, the state of nature was one of chaotic anarchy... in which every individual fought against every other individual in, to quote another well known phrase from the book, a war of all against all. Primeval chaos. So this was Hobbes' view of the state of nature. Of course society isn't like that. Or at least not all the time. It may at times become chaotic and disordered, but that, that's not the normal state of affairs, and Hobbes' analysis of social order leads him to conclude that social order only becomes possible, when individuals give up some of their freedom, to centralize authority. In which in Hobbes' view, should be a monarch, but in principle be any centralized erm, monopoly of er, of force. And by doing this, by giving up their, or at least part of their individual freedom everybody benefits, because law and order can be imposed by the er centralized authority,what whatever it may be. Nowadays, one of the explicit controversies which er, real kind of Hobbesian view, is er, debate about gun law, for example. The there's a widespread idea that if you let people have guns the result will be... more crimes of violence and more murders, and therefore, people conclude, er at least they do in this country, that only the state should have a monopoly of firearms, so only the police and the army should be allowed to have firearms. This allegedly, erm, protests the, protects the citizen, and the, the logic of this argument, is really the Hobbesian argument, that if you let ordinary individuals have firearms they'll go round killing each other, or so it is alleged. I don't believe it for one minute, personally, but this is the, this is the theory, and I'll explain why I don't believe it, later. The, the importance of this, is that Freud is often said to have been a Hobbesian thinker, in the sense that, er without necessarily being directly influenced by Hobbes, he took a similar, a similar kind of view, or at least, so it is said. You could say, that er, a Hobbesian view of human nature, that people are basically anti-social egoistic and er, aggressive, and that if left to themselves, life would be a war, war against all, is what we might call a pessimistic view of human nature. Pessimistic in the sense that is says people are basically nasty, and if society is to be possible, then nastiness has to be controlled in some way or other, and since human nature is anti-social, social order comes about against the grain of human nature as a rule, has to be imposed on human nature. This is why I call it a pessimistic theory. You'll see why in a minute. And I think you can see why I call it pessimistic because, basically it says in the Anglican prayer book, there is no good in us, what's in us is, is bad, in the sense of anti-social egoistic, and if people are going to cooperate and if there's gonna be social order, then as it were, it has to be imposed on them. The good has to be imposed from outside, it's not, it's not in human nature. So this is what I call a pessimistic er, view of human nature, this Hobbesian one. Well, the first book in which Freud explicitly takes up this question in the opening pages, is his book of nineteen twenty seven, er The Future of an Illusion, [writing on board] and his begins, by posing the Hobbesian question, although it doesn't mention Hobbes, but, it's the fundamental point he makes, that civilization goes against the grain of human nature, and the question he asks himself is, how does er, order, morality. civilization come about, and in this book he gives part of the answer, and concentrates on that, and part of the answer he gives is, that it comes about through the institutions of religion.
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] Religion acts as a restraining force on human nature, and er, raises people, as it were, to a higher, to a higher level, by for example giving them more proscriptions, like the ten commandments. So I think it's easy to see that religion fulfils this civilizing socially controlling role, but of course, this has been a popular theme in sociological writing in the course of the twentieth century, indeed, you could go so far as to say this, it is has become a cliche, in twentieth century social science. It wasn't quite so much a cliche in nineteen twenty seven, but erm, nevertheless, this is the starting point of Freud's er, Freud's analysis. Freud concedes that religion does indeed, have this restraining, civilizing role. Well, having agreed with that, Freud then, faces a problem, because the problem he faces is, that in the previous book of his, that we looked at er, that he had published erm, what fourteen or so years earlier, Totem and Taboo where he had talked about the origin of religion. He had given a picture of religion, which represented it as primarily concerned with guilt, with taboos against incest, and as er, representing the origins of civilization in primeval societies like those of the Australian Aborigines, and Freud erm, remarks in the opening pages of Civilization and Discontents that Totem and Taboo was never meant to be a complete theory of religion. He says, all I was doing in Totem and Taboo, was trying to explain Totemism, a very specific form of religion. I wasn't trying to advance a theory about religion in general, says Freud, but now I am, and in Future of an Illusion, he turns to the question of religion in general, not just er, teutonic religion, as in Totem and Taboo, but religion in general. So the question he goes on to is, given its civilizing restraining role... how did, what er, explanation can we give for religion in general? And, his answer to that, is that psychoanalysis can give us a very interesting and unique insight into, into religion, and this was an insight which had [cough] emerged in the course of, the nineteen twenties, following the developments of psychoanalysis that occurred after the First World War, which we've already looked at and is essentially the concept of transference. I don't think Freud ever uses the word transference in the book, I may be wrong, but er, it may be mentioned, I'm pretty sure it isn't, it certainly isn't in any prominence. You recall that transference is a concept that Freud introduced into psychoanalysis to explain the way in which the patient in an analysis, tended to cast the analyst in different roles of different people, usually from their past and usually from their childhood, so the analyst would play the role of father, mother, brother, sister or whatever by turns, very often, in the typical analysis. And I think you can see that the, the word transference here is, is in the sense that transference erm, alludes to transferring something from one place to another, as if the feeling, which were originally experienced, for example, in the family, were being transferred to the, to the analytic situation, to the, to the analysis. So this is how Freud originally discovered transference, as an observation made in the course of analysis, and as we saw, erm, a couple of weeks ago, whenever it was I was talking about group psychology, transference was a fundamental concept in Freud's theory of groups. Because basically what Freud was saying was, the group we create semi-unconscious, the, the family. The leader creates the parental role, the followers play the role of the children, and er, as I pointed out in the, in the lecture when I talked about that, often this is erm, explicitly indicated by symbolic terms, in groups, such as papa, erm, erm,whi which gives you the word pope. Erm, er, class brothers, sisters in a struggle, these kinds of phrases er, refer to this. Well, what Freud does in this book, is to effectively say, religion is a transference phenomenon. He explains the appeal of religion in general to people, by saying religion is a transference. What happens in religion, is that the deity or deities play the biblical role, and the believers and the er, people here below, as it were, play the role of the, of the child. And this makes sense to Freud, because he believes that people believe in, in religion because of the gratifications it gives them. For example, if you believe in religion, you believe that the world and life has some kind of order and meaning. If you don't believe in religion, you might think that er, the world was just kind of here for no particular reason, and er, that human existence was just a kind of accident or something happen happened, and er, has no has no greater significance. But if you're religiously inclined, then clearly the universe looks a bit different, because the universe has a creator, and having a creator gives it some kind of meaning. It implies for example, it was created for some kind of purpose. So Freud says, religion giv gives people a sense of meaning. It explains the inexplicable. Where do we come, you know, it's, it's, it's, it answers the life, the universe, and everything questions, you know. Why are we here? You know, where do we come from? The kind of thing you ask yourself when you've got a bad hangover. You know, wake up on a Monday morning, with a bad hangover, and you think, oh my god, you know, what is life about, is it really worth going on? Er, this is the kind of life, universe and everything question. However, religion can, can do a lot more than that. For example, many religions, er, give people reassurance in the sense that, for example, not only do they say there is a, a god, or gods or whatever there may be, but these er, deities play a providential role. They provide for people. Many religions, certainly Judaeo-Christianity in the religions of that tradition, which of course includes Islam and Mormonism, are some of the worlds most important religions. Er, these religions certainly, and many others for that matter too, portray the divinity as providential, as providing the world for human beings and as being concerned with human welfare.
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] Well, this is, is very reassuring, says Freud. It's nice to think, you know, there's someone up there, sitting in the cloud, watching over us and providing, as it were. This is er, this is a great reassurance. Again, the, the deity, in many religions is regarded as er, enforcing morality and justice, if not in the here below, then very often in the hereafter. So many religions, such as the religion of Ancient Egypt, for instance,whi which made a great fetish of this, has a belief in a judgment after death, followed by eternal retribution... er, heaven effectively for the just and er, damnation effectively for the unjust, and some religions like Catholicism stick in an intermediate state... pur purgatory, where you can work, work off a sentence, as it were, for a few, for a few thousand years. Kind of a heavenly parole system. And if you work off your sentence of pur you get parole to heaven at the end of it... which is very nice. Erm, but you see the point I am making, the idea is that er religion appeals to people, because they, they see the in injustices of the world, erm, you know if er, er, injustice is an, is an inevitable, erm, experience, erm, some of us erm, might be inclined to think especially if you live under the British system of er criminal justice, and so if you can't get justice here, perhaps you can after death, because god is ultimately just, and no mistakes will be made in heaven, as it were. Er, there, er, the er sinners will be published, erm, [LAUGHTER] the sinners will be published, er, sorry, that's a, that's a good point, see if I can remember that. Sinners will be published, er... punished, the sinners will be punished, and er, the just will be erm, just wi will, er will er will be rewarded. So that's another great, wishful thought, the great gratification. Particularly if you have a sense of injustice... in life. Again, religion appeals to people, erm merely in the idea of an afterlife. After all, er, the idea of death being the end of everything, isn't particularly gratifying to people, but er, the idea of an afterlife is, is very much more appealing, because it means death isn't the end, it's just a kind of transition from one state to another, and it's nice to think that er, there could be an afterlife, particularly if you can look forward to it, erm, in a, in a better place than here. So in all these kinds of different ways, religion provides succour erm, gratification and er, is the fulfilment of people's wishes, particularly th their frustrations, their erm, feelings of er being the victims as it were, of the world, can be satisfied to some extent by religious belief, which holds out some, some prospect of [cough] and hope, at least in the afterlife, if not, if not in this life. So said Freud, it's no wonder that people believe in religion, because religion can provide you with a lot, with a lot of gratification, but the fundamental... psychological explanation for this, says Freud, is that these feelings that religion gratifies in adult life, are transferences of feelings that we all had in infancy. In other words, these things I've been talking about, map, if I may use that concept again from mathematics, they map to earlier feelings. Feelings in early childhood, where we were, indeed, helpless, where the world was, in fact, meaningless, where we were er subject as it were to erm, the arbitrary erm to, to, to arbitrary fate, and felt it because we were young children, but in which there really was a power that looked after us. There was a power that was providential, would provide for us. We did have er, judges and censors who would judge us and reward us if we d did good and punish us if we did evil. We did live in a state, where there were others knew more about the world than we did, and could make sense of it for us. Those were our parents. So the parents, says s says Freud, play the role in th the reality of infancy, that the deity, or deities play in the fantasy or illusion of, of religion. Religion creates the illusion, that those parental forces which were indeed watching over us and guarding us while we were young, still do so in adult life. And Freud is careful here to use the word illusion. He distinguishes in the book between an error an illusion and a delusion. An error he says, is just a factual misapprehension, but er, you know, you could say er, the capital of Australia is Vienna. Well that would be an error, because it's actually Canberra, but you could be, you yo that's, that's a mistake er, that anybody could make. However, erm, thinking that er, one day, er, you might marry erm, a prince or princess, Freud says is an, is an illusion, in the sense that er, people do sometimes marry princ princes and princesses, it could happen, it's not very likely to happen... to any particular individual who might have that wish, but it could happen. Erm, as we know does happen. Not for long actually [], but it does happen. Erm, so that's an illusion, a delusion, in other words, an illusion is something that could happen, but the difference between an illusion and an error, is an error is just a cognitive mistake, an illusion is a cognitive mistake that is kept going by a wish. An, an illusion, erm, presupposes that there is some kind of er, of wish er,under underlying it. And the wish keeps the illusion going as it were. A delusion, on the other hand, is a, is a much more serious kind of factual error in which the element of wish fulfilness becomes so strong that it won't countenance any evidence against it. So a delusion is something that people insist on believing, erm, no matter what. For example, erm, in erm, paranoia, delusions of persecution where people believe that [cough] is plotting against them, and no matter what you do, erm, you know if you said well look, we can prove to you we are not plotting against you, the paranoic says to you, why do you want to prove this to me, if it's not true, you know. You can't win. Not against a delusion. So Freud is not saying religion is a delusion or an error, he's saying it's an illusion, and it's an illusion because it's a factual mistake maintained by wish fulfilment. It's a factual mistake, of course, because er, there aren't in fact deities looking after us in the way there were parents in, in childhood. Our parents after all, were, were real people. They actually existed. Whereas erm, divinities exist only in people's er, hopes or imaginations. They don't er, you can't see them in the same way you could go and see your parents. And er, this illusion is maintained according to Freud, because of the wishes that people have. These wishes go straight back to childhood, and... so religion represents a transference from childhood and a kind of emotional infantilism in which people try and make out that they're still children, as it were, even though they, even though they really aren't.
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] And then of course, the other characteristics that go with religion, and that he had emphasized in other books on Totem and Taboo, like guilt, the feeling that you ought to obey the moral commands... of the parents, because after all the parents weren't just benevolent entities who looked after you and rewarded you and praised you, but they were your judges and censors as well. They punished you when you did... the wrong thing, and they rewarded you when, when, when they did, when you did the right thing. So the believing in religion with, with moral codes, particularly in those religions which have rather strict moral codes, and demand quite a lot from the believer, in terms of adherence to the er, to the moral law... even those religions can be explained in terms of Freud's transference theory, because that too, comes from childhood. The thing that you have to obey, if you don't obey you will be punished. That too, is a transference from the childhood situation, where the child is under the authority of the parent. In adult life the, the, the authority of religion stems from this, from this transference effect. Now here of course, and, and by now we've reached the closing pages of the book, though it's actually quite a short book, erm, it doesn't take very long to read. Here, Freud in terms of paradox, because on the one hand, he started out asking the problem of order. How is order possible, and answered it in part, by saying, well, religion is a civilizing order creating force. In the next step of the argument, he then said, well, religion is a transference, and therefore a form of infantilism, so now he seems to be criticizing religion, but if he's criti criticizing religion by saying it's an illusion, surely he's jeopardizing civilization, because the danger, as he points out in the book, if you take religion away from people, you say, look, this is just an illusion, God doesn't exist. The ten commandments are just a myth... it carries no more force whatsoever. Might the consequence of that be, that people then... go out and murder and steal and rape and... fight wars, and do all, do all these kinds anti-social things? In other words, if you say, religion is an illusion, are you undermining and destroying social order? This is a... this is a paradox that Freud has to face up to. And in the closing pages of the book, he answers this... this er, problem, by saying, well look, er, you don't have to base morality, civilization, and social order on an illusion. On the contrary, Freud says, basing it on an illusion is, is very very dangerous. Because you see, the thing with illusions is, it's okay as long as people believe. For example, you know, you could frighten a child into... I mean this is not an, an analogy Freud uses, this is one I thought of, but it's in the same spirit as his argument. You could, for example, frighten a child into conformity with your wishes by saying that erm, you know, if, if the child doesn't go to bed at the right time, the bogie man will come and eat them up, or something. You might say something like that. And I can remember being frightened of the bogie man when I was a little er child. My elder brother used to terrify me with it. Erm, okay the bogie man would come and eat me up. Erm, well as long as the child is, is young enough to believe in the bogie man, everything is fine, and that child may well go to bed on time and er, and er, shuts its eyes and goes straight to sleep... er in fear. But what happens if the child matures a bit, and realizes that the bogie man is just er, just er an invention, created to, to set fear in it? In the first place, says Freud, the child won't obey any longer, necessarily, because now he's got nothing to fear, and secondly, a child might resent the lie that has been told to him. You know, I was told about the bogie man, but the bogie man, I now know, didn't, didn't, didn't, didn't exist. So, Freud says, trying to build morality on the basis of religion, is like trying to build a house on sand, because the foundations won't hold. The foundations are illusory. What we need, says Freud, is a sure foundation for social order, and the only foundation that will do is, is reality. The trouble with religion, is that transference is based on an illusion and it serves the pleasure principle ultimately, because it's a tremendous wish fulfilment. Wish fulfilments as we know, and what we saw about dreams and so on, so the pleasure principle that reigns in the unconscious. And as we saw, the unconscious is out of contact wi with reality and so need take no account of it. However, says Freud, ideally, morality and social order should be based, not on the pleasure principle, but on the reality principle, and, and, and he ends up with... this book invoking the idea that science should replace erm, religion in, in this respect. In other words that science should establish insights into reality which make social order erm, both possible and well founded. Now in this particular book, Freud doesn't say very much about what these insights er, are. And er, as you'll see, probably next week's, I'm not going to get to this now, er, next week, or possible the week after, even, depending on how long it takes me to get there, I will suggest to you that the revolution now taking place in behavioural science, does suggest wh what they are, and that there are in fact some deeply countering intuitive insights, erm, into this whole issue, which have only emerged in the last few years. But er, this is just by way of an anticipation, the... the general conclusion comes for instance, in this rather generalized book, and relatively short book, is that we ought to base variety and social order on science, and its insights, and certainly not on, on religion, and, and there he, there he leaves the question. However, he takes it up again, at much greater length, in his next book of nineteen thirty, Civilization and its Discontents. [writing on board] This book erm, begins, once again with the Hobbesian problem. The,wi with the, with the question of social order. Only in this book, it comes out even more clearly. Civilization, says Freud, is based on the suppression, repression and inhibition and frustration of the id
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] people's individual er, drives, especially their sexual and aggressive drives, which are deeply compromised by having to live erm, in a civilized er, society. So er, in so far as human nature can be equated with the id, it seems to me, perfectly correct to say that Frob erm,Frob I was going to say, Freud, Freud was a Hobbesian thinker. Hobbes was a Freudian thinker, no. Freud was a Hobbesian thinker, erm, in the sense that the id, certainly was egoistic, anti-social and everything that Thomas Hobbes said about human nature, er, could apply to the id, that's perfectly true, and most people see this, and it's er it, it's a commonplace, particularly in the social science writing on Freud. And a lot of the book is concerned with developing this theme, and that I thought came out quite well in the classes, so I won't bother to repeat all that, because I thought we did that fairly thoroughly in, in the class. I don't want to waste your time. What people don't notice, however, and is so important, is that the id is not the only institution of a personality. As we saw, there is a second area of a personality, which psychoanalysis during the nineteen twenties and thirties was exploring actively and this is the ego. If we now look at the ego, as opposed to the id, then immediately we see that it is, it is emphatically not true to claim that Freud was a Hobbesian social thinker. Because the ego was not anti-social but pro-social, and we've already seen er two ways in which that is true. When we looked at group psychology and analysis of the ego, we saw that it was processes that occur in the ego, such as identification and projection, that make social groups possible, that bring about the social order of psychological groups. So that makes the ego pro-social, and in Future of an Illusion, we saw Freud arguing, that there were fundamental pro-social currents of feeling in the ego, in terms of the ego's wish fulfilment for, for example, a benevolent god, a divine justice and things like this. These are wishes of the ego, and they're gratified in the illusion of religion, but as we've also seen, Freud erm, notices even though he doesn't comment, that the illusion of religion is pro-social, in the sense that it maintains social order, systems and morality, and so on. So it seems to me that those sociologists, and there've been a lot of them, who have taken the view that Freud like some other social thinkers, like any of their kind, for example, was a, was simply a Hobbesian thinker, hadn't really read their Freud, or at least they hadn't read their Freud after about World War One. You could certainly take that view of Freud, and it would have been true, perhaps, if Freud had died er, before, er, nineteen eighteen, shall we say, or in fourteen. Then I think people would be justified in saying, well, Freud was essentially a Hobbesian social thinker. That was the time when Freud was exploring just the id. After World War One, as we've been seeing, he was exploring the ego, and... his writing about the ego, in particular, group psychology and Future of an Illusion, show quite clearly that he saw the ego as a pro-social fact in the personality. Something that impelled the individual towards identifying with other people, performing groups, to accepting norms and values for these super-ego, which emerges during this time, and so on. So I think the, the statement Freud was a Hobbesian social thinker is just wrong. It's factually wrong, or at least it's factually wrong, if you were taking note of Freud's writings after World War One. If you look at all Freud's writings, I think what you have to say is, if you want to say that, you must make the qualification that the id is a Hobbesian erm, thing as it were, but the ego is a pro-social erm, part of the personality. Now here, it's useful to contrast the Hobbesian approach, which I call the pessimistic view of human nature, with one that I would call optimistic. [writing on board] Now the optimistic view of nature is the exact opposite. A good example of this, if we wanted to er, have somebody as it were, to counterbalance er, the English philosopher Hobbes, would be the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, writing a little bit later, not much actually... seventeen twelve to seventeen seventy eight erm, about a century later. Jean Jacques Rousseau, famous French philosopher, whose view of human nature, was what I would call optimistic, in the sense that, by contrast to Thomas Hobbes, John Rousseau believed that human beings were basically good. He believed that human beings were born sociable, cooperative, altruistic, nice, civilized and that if, in later life, they showed anti-social selfish, criminal erm, egoistic tendencies, it was because of what happened to them after they were born. It was because of the effects of other people and society on them, that they were corrupted as it were. I once met a social worker, this was years ago, I... I was gonna say, this couldn't happen today, but it probably could, erm, one hopes it couldn't happen today, but it probably would happen today, too. A social worker, who said to me, inside every, every, what she say so... inside er, every juvenile delinquent, there's a little Leonardo da Vinci trying to get out. [LAUGHTER] Well, if you believe that, I think you'll believe anything. But erm, that's the idea, you see, that these kids, er well, you know, they may be delinquent, and do lots of nasty things, but it's only the way they've been treated by society. Basically, human nature is good. This was, this is what I call an optimistic view, and this was Rousseau's view of human nature, that basically people were good, and er, cooperative, and it was the bad things in human nature that had to be explained, not the good. The good was natural. But the bad things, and of course, Rousseau's solution to the problem of order was quite different from Hobbes' . Hobbes' solution was, order must be imposed on a recalcitrant human nature, to make society possible, Rousseau's [cough] theory was, if only people could be liberated from the things that makes them selfish, selfish and anti-social, they would come together in a natural social contract, where individuals would spontaneously give up their freedom, in order to gain the benefits of social cooperation, and Rousseau's view was, if only people were, were fully rational, and could free themselves from the unfortunate effects of, of er civilization, they would enter into a state of erm, perfect society in which they could er, associate er without the, the necessity of things like the state or... or whatever.
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] Very very optimistic view of human nature. Later, erm, this was developed by people like Marx, who emphasized the ec economic role, erm, the e economic aspect of erm, of er, the ill effects of civilization. But basically the idea, erm, is I think well represented by er, by Rousseau, and it's a view that has been very influential, for instance, in modern education, and some people would say it explains the disaster that erm th that some people think er modern education is.... Now, the... these two views of human nature, the pessimistic, as I'm calling it, and the optimistic lead to two different views of the child, as I've already implied. The Rousseau view of the child, is one where children are basically er, noble savages. Are born free, but everywhere in the chain, as to quote a famous phrase from Rousseau, the kind of noble savage view of the child. This regards the child as not in need of socialization or control, but basically er, good in its own right. In the best example, in modern education, is that er, progressive school, what's the school, Summer Hill or... the school where the kids are allowed to do absolutely everything they like. Erm, very revealing. Erm, er, if you, if you know anything about the kind of thing that actually goes on... er, it's nothing like the it's supposed to be. But that was the, that was the theory that it was founded on. That, that, you know, if you give children complete freedom, they will, they will know, as it were,wh what's best for them, you don't need any, any rules, or anything. Or at least er, not any rules they don't impose on themselves. So that's the, that's the, there's an optimistic view of, of, of the child. The pessimist, the Hobbesian thinkers, have a pessimistic view of the child. They see the child as basically a, a little animal, a wild animal, who has to be tamed, and er, disciplined and controlled by er, various means, and er, this is the, I think the view of the child that was more popular in British education, at least traditional education, which erm, for the public schools of Eton, which in this country was based on er, on er brutality, I think there's the only word you can call it. Certainly, I'd never erm, forgiven er people for beatings I got at school. I mean there's downright brutality, and, and, and deserved to be called nothing else. But anyway, the idea that the brutality is er justified, and you have to beat the hell out of little kids because er, if you don't you won't civilize them. This goes, I think you can see, with the pessimistic view, the Hobbesian view, that for civilization order has to be, has to be imposed. Well, where does Freud stand in all this? You, seems to me that, if you think about it, the Freudian view is what I would like to call a realistic one. Because just as I was saying, that Freud's view was that, okay, there's the id and that may be Hobbesian, but there's also the ego, which if you like is, is more kind of Rousseauness... it's pro-social, and therefore I would say Freud is not a pessimistic, or an optimistic social thinker, but something in between. What I would call a realistic social thinker, namely, somebody who saw there is good and bad in human nature. Freud didn't go to one extreme or the other, he didn't go to the Hobbes extreme and say there is no good in us... you know, we're just anti-social egoists, although he did know that was true of the id. Nor did he go to the Rousseau extreme, saying that we're basically noble savages. But he did recognize that there was strong pro-social currents in the, in the ego, and the resulting view, I think, is what I would call a realistic view of human nature. Which I think any sensible person ought to come to, which is, that human beings are neither basically bad, evil, and anti-social, no more are they basically good, altruistic and cooperative. They're a mixture of both. Sometimes, people can be evil, egoistic, destructive and aggressive, and think only of themselves as we know... to our cost, and as we see all around us in the world, from time to time. But at other times, as we also know, people can be remarkably altruistic and committed to others. You've only got to think of the career of erm, Audrey Hepburn who died today, or yesterday, whenever it was. Well, she's a shining example of that. The Audrey Hepburns in this world, may not be as numerous, unfortunately, as the people running around in Bosnia, or er Somalia, but they do exist, and you have to see that there are both of these sides of human nature. People can be very good, they can also be very bad. It seems to me the Freudian view takes both into account. Furthermore, it doesn't just take both into account in terms of some vague philosophical waffle, you know, that anybody could come to, sitting on a bar stool, after they've had enough er, dry martinis, you know as people sometimes good, people sometimes bad. I mean that, this kind of, that, that, that's a cliche. I mean, the Freudian insight is a much deeper one. It says the personality is structured in such a way that there is an egoistic anti-social area, the id. That there is another pro-social erm, constituent, the ego, and furthermore, these are different, and different things occur in each, and different processes occur. For example, the pro-social erm, factors mobilize projection and identification, and the anti- social ones are to do with the instinctual drives, and, and, and so on. So it, it, it's a, it goes much beyond merely a kind of er, cliche, of saying, all people can be sometimes good or people can be sometimes bad, and it tells you about the specific way in which this th this comes about. An example, er, of what I'm talking about, which I think shows this very nicely, and is, is something I wanted to mention, because it's important in itself, is the shifts in Freud's views on anxiety. [writing on board] As we saw, in the early phase of psychoanalysis, before World War One, when it was dominated by the view of Freud and in the eighteen nineties, and when psychoanalysis was mainly id analysis, and concerned with the unconscious, Freud took the view of anxiety as a pathological transformation of the libido. The libido was then regarded as a kind of emotional torrent, that if it was frustrated underwent a pathological transformation into anxiety. Er, I think I mentioned this, I hope I did, pretty sure I did. After World War One, in the second phase of the psychoanalysis, when he was concerned with the analysis of ego, anxiety became a sense of danger in the ego, and the ego felt anxiety when it was threatened, and as a result, there was three sorts of anxiety... neurotic anxiety, when the ego was threatened by the drives of the id... moral anxiety, when it was threatened by punishment from the super ego, and realistic anxiety, when it was threatened by dangers from the outside world. Some early analysts, though not Freud,
[speaker002:] [cough]
[Chris:] I, I emphasize, but some of his followers, took the view that anxiety, for example, in children, was pathological, and they, that generation of analysts tried to bring up their children to be free of anxiety, and, and then, you still get this in a lot of popular child psychology today, the idea that anxiety is always bad and always wrong. Anna Freud writing many years later in her classic book, erm, Normality of Pathology in Childhood, erm, candidly admits that er, the first generation of analysts was wrong about this, and she, she, she, she candidly says that the analytic profession changed its view, although Freud never did. Freud always regarded anxiety as normal, but the erm, many of his colleagues didn't, and, and Anna Freud erm admits that er, experience proved that er, her father's original view turned out to be, turned out to be the right one. And she says that attempts to free children of anxiety proved to be emissary. The reason is that erm, if the child ceases to be afraid, for example, of the parents, or of outside, of outside discipline or control, it instead becomes anxious and terrified of its own instinctual drives which it can't control. An anxiety appears to be a permanent fixture in human mental life, it's not one that you can, you can live without. Of course, if you take the Freudian view of anxiety as a danger signal in the, in the ego, that, that makes sense. And Anna Freud's conclusion is, that all children will experience anxiety, but what they experience anxiety about will, will vary, and clearly the best thing is that they experience anxiety about things that are important and are real, rather than anxiety about things that are unimportant and unreal. But in general, she admits that there was, there proved to be no way of freeing the child from anxiety. So anxiety would be, you see, would be something that points out what I'm calling this realistic view of human nature. That the, the other point to be made about the pessimistic and optimistic theories is, they, because they're extremely elusive, they can easily suggest the idea of utopias, and you get two different sorts of utopias. The pessimistic thing was, the Hobbesians always looked back to the past, some golden age of order in the past, you know, when, when people knew what to do and er, and er, things were right as it were, and th they tend to want to restore some ideal state of order and authority that existed in the past, which was much better than now, because civilization has gone to the dogs, and been corrupted and so on. And they look back, and er, these pessimistic views are usually reactionary. Politically, they're usually reactionary. The pessimists want to go back. I mean effectively, I always wanted to go back to the middle ages er, with, with the history books of English society. English society, of course didn't work out that way. The realis the opt optimistic theories, on the other hand, also had their utopias, but they look forward. For the, for the optimists, the, the utopia is, is always in the, in the future, and these people er, tend to be revolutionaries. They tend to say we must overthrow the existing social order and establish a new just social order, when human beings will be liberated from the corrupting erm, alienating er forces, that er, make them bad, and everything will be, everything will be okay. The Freudian realistic view it seems to me, couldn't allow you to draw either conclusion, you couldn't, neither conclude, that things were better in the past and therefore we ou ought to go back to the golden age, nor, could you conclude that things will ever be any better in the future. Anxiety for example, is something that human beings will always experience, and to think that you can free them from anxiety in some future utopia, or go back to some ordered erm, ideal state in the past, where everyone was so secure, that they would never feel anxiety, is just a myth according to Freud. Freud's view is a realistic one of human nature, which says that people will experience anxiety and frustration and er, all kinds of erm, feelings that they may not want to have. But they will experience those feelings, because human nature is not at either of these extreme points, it's neither erm, perfectly good, nor perfectly bad, it's a, it's a mixture of both, and consequently, although you can improve the world, for it doesn't deny you can improve the world, or make it worse, of course. To think that you could bring about a utopia, and perfect human nature in one way or another, is really a wildly er, optimistic and er, is in itself, er, some kind of illusion. Well, at that point I will end what I have to say for today, and er, carry on with this next week. Thank you very much... Yes, yes, you can, can catch me now.... [tape stopped and restarted]
[speaker002:] Hobbesian theory being... Yes, that's right, Yes, well, commiserations Er, no, it's a bit tough, I suppose You could bring some evolutionary insight to it. Oh yes, oh yes yes, that's right Oh yeah Are you keeping that sort of thing that that in some ways could be considered to be a system.
[Chris:] If I let it run away with me, it might, you know...
[speaker002:] tie it up
[Chris:] I mean, if you like me to leave your paper, to write to one, I'll be quite pleased to look at it...
[speaker002:] Okay, alright,
[Chris:] if you want to discuss it with me.
[speaker002:] Okay.
[Chris:] I mean if you want do a paper for this group, on, you know, on the sociological periods of evolution, and, and how they look from our perspective. You could substitute it, perhaps for that one.
[speaker002:] Yeah, okay, okay well look,
[Chris:] Have a think about it...
[speaker002:] yeah, okay.
[Chris:] if, if you want to do a version of it first, I think we, we, we'll appreciate it very much.
[speaker002:] Okay, fine, okay yes.
[Chris:] in order to get, because I hesitate to give you more work to do, you got enough work.
[speaker002:] fine.
[Chris:] But, think about it, it could be interesting.
[speaker002:] Yeah, okay, sure, fine.
[Chris:] We'll have words about it.
[speaker002:] Thank you.
[Chris:] come on in. Now, I have some good news for you, and you could do with some good news, couldn't you?
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Chris:] Least, I hope it's good news, from what you said last night, I think it would be good news. I have got you a computer, one of these... would you like one of those?
[speaker002:] I'd love one of those.
[Chris:] Right, we can get you one. I'll tell you what's happened. The thing is, the school has just launched a, a new programme to lend portable computers to graduate students, okay? Now, we've got one in this department, like this, and er, one of our graduate students was very interested in it, and since she was just finishing her P H D... [tape stopped and restarted] the in some of the ways, some of the most erm, outspoken erm, persons for this, but I'm certainly not alone. There's a growing body now, of people who are thinking along similar lines, and er, so it's, it, it's, I think you'd be unwise to wipe this off just, just as my eccen eccentricity. I mean, it may be that. Look, we're gonna have to stop. we can carry on with this next week, as, as you see, we've touched on a big topic, so we'll, we'll leave it to you to introduce next week's discussion, whatever way you think fit, erm, that raises other issues which you want to talk about. Okay. Thanks very much. And well done that was an excellent... [tape change]
[speaker002:] a little contradictory. Erm, I read another erm, book on believing this.
[Chris:] Yeah, fine.
[speaker002:] Er, I have an example of
[Chris:] Right. Could be, certainly quite old, erm, and a socialist, of course.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[Chris:] You ought to point out.
[speaker002:] Right.
[Chris:] Not completely true.
[speaker002:] Ah, let me just say what leaders of peacetime Margaret was after early life was that a cold mother who was erm, full of personality People of London biography of the leader of the Conservative, because at least half the book is about
[Chris:] That's where it belongs.
[speaker002:] Erm. at least not fully in command of ourselves, let alone the social and political world around us. It's certainly wrong though, I think erm, there was erm, the question
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] Er, but I do believe that made very important the reason, er, the first question is and people weren't reading about that. Erm,
[Chris:] Well... Well done, that was absolutely first rate, I mean erm, it was a difficult er, task you had, especially as the book wasn't in the library, of which I am deeply apologetic, because I thought it was, and er, I thought you er, you coped with a very difficult assignment extremely well, and I think you can have an extra and I'm sure everyone else thinks so too. Er, as I have said, I haven't done Woodrow Wilson before in the past, so, so it was an experiment, and erm, I must admit,yo you rose to the occasion excellently. The choice of literature, as you realize was meant to be contrasting, and I put book down as an example of what I thought was the worst possible, er, use of use of psychoanalysis, kind of gutter journalism, erm and which you didn't look at, and it's, it's no criticism of you erm, because er, you had your work cut out with what you did do, but the reason I put down Gandhi's Truth, if anybody's ever read that, have they? This is the exact opposite from, because it's erm, it idealizes Gandhi. It kind of builds Gandhi up into a great er figure, as it were, ignoring his feet of clay, erm, which he definitely had. So erm, [cough] book on which is kind of a character association by a pop cycle analysis and Gan erm, book on Gandhi, which is using cycle analysis, of, of, of, of tremendous contrast. And er, er, the question is of course, where does Freud's book on Woodrow Wilson belong? Does it belong in the kind of erm, camp or not? Well, erm, what do other people think?
[speaker002:] But isn't, isn't that the quote at the beginning of your book, er, unsigned quote, erm, doesn't that say something about how, how, you know, long aired radio biography of someone is very political or sort of er, disregard all of the important things they really done, and I don't know, I don't know if it's er, pertinent erm, but obviously, in Freud, Freud wanted to set out to criticize Wilson erm, so he, you know, he went in with it. I mean, he was
[Chris:] Yes.
[speaker002:] obviously going to buck out of the
[Chris:] He was.
[speaker002:] biographical allegiance which made him look bad.
[Chris:] Yes.
[speaker002:] Erm, and er, on other hand he got everything, got his own book out biography
[Chris:] Of course, I think if, if, if Freud were here, he would defend himself, by saying I was quite open about my prejudice against Wilson at the beginning of the book, as reminds us, Freud says quite clearly, how he felt about all this. But I think Freud would have also gone on to say that he had very good reason for resenting Wilson, because he blamed Wilson personally for the unjust peace, after er Versailles, but er, was indirectly, many people would argue, going to lead to the Second World War, and er, so Freud's defence I think would be, this man really was responsible. Because after all, the situation in my, I don't know, I mean, I don't know how well you know your modern history. I'm not certain, I'm not a great expert on it, but erm, the situation seems to be, that after the First World War, the central power was Germany and Austria, were defeated. Er, France, er was, er battle ravaged and its economy in ruins. This country was bankrupt, and had to borrow money from the United States of America to keep going, and er, Russia had just had a revolution and was still in chaos. So the United States was really the only world power erm, erm, as were able to do anything. In, in some ways, the situation you know, was a bit like, like what it is now, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, only more so, I would say, because the, the other powers were more, were even more prostrate than is, is, is the situation today. So... for a while, the President of the United States effectively had world power, there was no other power in the world who could stand up to the U S, er, after, after, World War One for one argument anyway, and I think Freud's er, defence disposition would be, Woodrow Wilson was the man who came to Europe, saying he would bring a just peace for all, and went away leaving a total mess, and, and, Freud's er argument in his book is, told us was, well, the mess er, was really Wilson's own doing, and if it was his doing, what was it in his character that allowed him to er,si to on some Lloyd George, who bullied him into getting most of what they wanted. So, that would be Freud's defence, now, I suppose you would have to know a lot more about modern history, to, to know, if this was really true or not, but erm, the... the er, question that Freud was really asking himself, really was, why did Wilson let us down, because Freud admits that he regarded Wilson, when he came to Europe as a saviour. You know, here, here was somebody coming from outside Europe who would bring, you know, peace and justice for all. Let's hope, I quoted the American Constitution correctly, did I? Erm, you know, perhaps the kind of way people look on President today. You know, which is only day one of his inauguration. We'll see what happens to him, President. But erm, that would be for its, for its er, defence, I suppose. Is it fallible I mean how do, how do modern America let's ask er and erm, er and. How do modern Americans see Woodrow Wilson?
[speaker002:] Erm
[Chris:] What's your image of him?
[speaker002:] er, I don't know, I think he forgot you know,
[Chris:] Yeah
[speaker002:] I don't, I don't... I remembered him having in my school library
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] he was regarded as a very very smart man
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] and er, one of our most intellectual presidents.
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And I don't think, I don't think most people considered him vulnerable, very vulnerable. I mean, they know that working
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] But I don't think most people, er, would necessarily consider it than now on the European side, they might consider. Erm, but you know, but I think they did. I think it marks the beginning of the United States their first real world power. So I think that's, that's how he was
[Chris:] I see. Mm. So people don't blame him for the consequences of Versailles?
[speaker002:] I don't think so.
[Chris:] No, no. To answer my own question, I did.
[speaker002:] I mean, I think
[Chris:] Yeah. No, that's true, that's true. What about er, European history, who's studied this period in modern history at school? Have you?
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Chris:] What question do you go to Woodrow Wilson?
[speaker002:] frankly, he was a
[Chris:] I see. No.
[speaker002:] everything he wants. But the things is, he wanted to a lot of things about came up like in the middle...
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] ages before the war you more you think about it,
[Chris:] Mm. Yes. I see, yes. Anyone else got a view on this?
[speaker002:] He was a very odd man, though...
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] as Freud said, that at fourteen adult life [LAUGHTER]
[Chris:] Good one, doc, yes,
[speaker002:] And erm, I mean er, the last eighteen months of his presidency he erm, settled with Mrs Wilson because he would be incapable
[Chris:] Yeah, the, of course, er, Freud had one advantage here, and that was Bullitt. Erm, as we know, Bullitt was a member of the delegation and an intimate of, of Wilson, so the book is er co- authored, so in a sense we should know as we're paying for, for all of it, because er, obviously, he relied on Bullitt to give him all this biographical information, and er, consequently what you see Freud doing in this in this book is, is er trawling through, as it were, the things that Bullitt told him, that, that Bullitt had found out, to erm, draw a kind of psy psychoanalytic portrait of Woodrow Wilson, that erm, tried to explain his problem, why did he not deliver the goods as it were. And the... if you put the character of Woodrow Wilson aside, the, the central theme which comes out of this book, which is I think why it's important, worth reading... certainly the introduction is worth reading. There is a three or four page brief introduction er, to the book, which is presumably by Freud himself, because it's about psychoanalysis, and I don't think Bullitt could have written it. Erm, what's worth reading about that, and it comes out strongly in the introduction, is that this is a kind of case stu study of a particular kind of person. Er, er, a man who grows up under the shadow of his father, as it were. So it's quite an interesting, whatever you think about Woodrow Wilson in the First World War [cough] is quite a interesting book, in drawing a character study of the kind of person who Freud must have seen many times in his practice. The man who grows up idealizing his father, and whose relationship with his father is a largely passive one. So he tends to regard his father as a kind of ideal he can never equal, and tends if anything to identify with er, with his own mother, and play a kind of passive role to his, to his father. And this is how Freud explains Wilson's inability to stand up to the other men, like Woodrow, like Cle Clements or Lloyd George, who were rather aggressive, and er, were, were kind of pushing all the time, what they could out of the, out of the peace settlement, and what, er the book shows, is that Woodrow Wilson would have confrontations with them and say a lot of fine words, and then the next day, he would, he would give it all away, as it were, he would, he would be ill or he'll backtrack, or when the actual agreements came to be signed, he, he wouldn't do what he said he would, er,wh what he did. So Freud has to explain this weakness of Wilson, in the face of erm, these much more dominant aggressive men he was up against in these very hard er hitting negotiations, about what to do about the world after, after World War One. So, Freud's view is that he was, this passive erm nature of, of, of, retiring er nature of, of Woodrow Wilson, which explains his inte intellectuality as says, erm, Wilson was a very intellectual man. He had a great fondness for speeches and oratory. Apparently, in his childhood, he'd give speeches to an empty barn, er, had, would stand in the, in the family barn, erm, giving lectures to the hay, you know, and he, he, he loved this, and he, he was, he had a great erm sense of grandiloquent language and, Freud and Bullitt's interpretation is that, Woodrow Wilson, in a sense, was a typical politician. Very good at words, not so good at, at, at actions and actually delivering the goods as it were
[speaker002:] So, why, why do you?
[Chris:] Well, er... I asked... this, because erm, when I was having my house it came up, and I and I pointed out to her th the astonishing anomaly, I said, look erm, everybody knows about manuscript, Ernest and his biography of Freud mentions it and says he read it and reports rather well of it, actually, was really quite impressed with it. I said knew about it, erm, you must have known about it, erm, that standard edition of the complete psychological works of Freud, that's its title, and you're one of the editors, one of the editors, I said, there's no evidence that you ever intended to include this book in it, even though, you know, I understand that it couldn't be published as long as Woodrow Wilson's family was still alive, but erm, you know, why wasn't it published in the standard edition? And said I don't know. Now, she could have been lying. I don't think she would have told me a, a lie. When I asked her things like that, she didn't want to tell me on other occasions, she said I know that I can't tell you. Er, she was an honest person. I think that's what she would have said. If, if, if that had been the case, she'd say, oh, I do know, but I'm afraid I can't tell you. When she said, I don't know, I think she was telling me the truth, she didn't know. Erm, the fact is, she didn't play a dominant part in the standard tradition, although she was one of the editors, of course. Er, she was mainly one of the editors because she was erm, her father's, you know she even inherited her father's estate. So, so that was in her share of the management. I don't think she'd taken erm prominent role in the day to day planning of the standard edition, this was done by erm, calculable spreadsheet. So erm, I think when she said she didn't know, er, she was telling the truth, and when asked her if she could explain to me, the very point that just asked me, again she said she, she couldn't explain, she had, she she'd agreed, agreed it was a paradox, that she didn't really know erm, why the book had never been published, or... until nineteen sixty seven erm note, note that it, that it had been taken. Erm, my only view is that, er, the reason is that, by the time it saw the light of day, because remember, the manuscript was in the, the manuscript was physically in the possession of the Bullitt family not the Freud family. Erm, when the Bullitt family sought it to published it, it was published, but by that time, the kind of changes that I talked about at the beginning of my lectures, had already occurred in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis had evolved into a highly therapeutic undertaking, which was very very and institutionalized for therapy, and the black books had already been blackened, as it were. People were already tending to ignore these very works we're looking at, theomonoism we'll be looking at next week, gonna tell us about that, aren't you.
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Chris:] Another very black book, er, Civilization Discon these kind of books were, er, generally er, at, at er best ignored, at worst disparaged, by the psychoanalytic establishment. So when this book on, on Woodrow Wilson appeared, I mean, it gets even blacker. Er, particularly since it was only half right, or you couldn't exactly tell which half, not very clearly, so if it's half by Freud, and er, it was a book erm, on erm, a controversial figure arguing over very controversial pieces, and I think the psychoanalytic study didn't want to have anything to do with it, and er, er, one of the reviews of the psychoanalytic journal that said that this is the kind of book that gets psychoanalysis a bad name. And er, on the other side, the, the people interested in it in the social sciences, erm, didn't particularly like it, because, at that time, they were heavily dominated by er, Marxist and people on the left. I mean, I myself, for instance, after I'd published my first book on psychoanalysis in nineteen eighty was summoned to the House of Commons by and given a dinner, in the House of Commons Restaurant, which isn't very good actually, least it wasn't then, and effectively I was told by this great man was, noticed, had a very high opinion of his own ego, that erm, you know the left was in charge of psychoanalysis in this country, and had better conform or shut up. My views were not politically correct. And would I please stop publishing on psychoanalysis and leave it to my elders and betters. Like. So I er, I politely told him what he could do with that, well, I was eating his dinner and I couldn't be too rude to him, but erm, you know, when er when, when confronted, I don't give ground over that kind of thing. I said, you know, I'd every right to resume my own research, erm, if the Labour Party thought it owned psychoanalysis, I'm afraid I have, have to differ. So we, we parted on that note. But erm, the people like and the left, didn't like the book either, because it didn't tell their particular interpretation, as kind of left Marxist er, interpretation as someone has it, was so popular at the time. And so the book was just kind of, ignored I think, and left standing, and now it's out of print, and we've discovered this week, it's not even in the university library. Erm, it must have vanished, there was a copy there. Er, so it's, it, it's one of these strangely anomalous works, it, it's, it has spawned, I must admit, some very unfortunate literature, and I think 's own book is the worst example, but it's not the only one. There's a whole area of psycho-history. Has anybody read about psycho-history? There's a whole school of psycho- history mainly in the United States, not many followers here, and er, I must admit, I, I used to have er a class on psycho-history on this course, and I dropped it, and the reason was, I think students didn't find it very satisfactory, and the literature was of such poor quality. It really was er of the sort, you know, if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch longer, history would have all been different, you know, that, that kind of trivia. Erm [cough] I think you can see that the problem with this kind of biographical approach to history is it can degenerate into trivia. Of the kind that himself wrote of. Which I think is, er, is one of the worst examples of trivial. Because, because clearly, you can see that in the social sciences, there is a big problem. If you think that individual people have a big role in history, like and Woodrow Wilson, I doubt if he did, I mean everybody would admit that these were important figures obviously, but the question is, how important were they, compared with social, political and economic factors, possibly beyond their control? I mean this is the big issue, isn't it?
[speaker002:] I thought, like, I mean, isn't the basic idea of psychoanalysis is that, you know that, that these people are repressing something and that's studying, and the question is how well, can you arrive at what they were repressing, by just sort of secondhand, you know, I mean...
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] wouldn't you, I mean, not as so best way to figure out what they were repressing, but just, I mean wouldn't you need to really have the whole life in front of you
[Chris:] You would.
[speaker002:] to figure out? I mean, we urgently [cough] certainly we can psychoanalyse a group, you know, the group psy the group psychology, because we all understand how groups act, and we can say, oh, yes groups act like that, you do act like that, that makes sense and that can prove it, you know. But with, with a man, I mean, you really need to have every single incident in his life, to, to really know what
[Chris:] That is absolutely true. Yes, this is another big problem I think you put that very well, that people forget, of course, that in clinical psychoan analysis the analyst has a vast amount of data, because the patient is going five times a week, or in Freud's case, six times a week, for fifty minutes every day, six days a week, nine months of the year, often for several years and er, the, the sheer amount of data that the analyst gets, is absolutely immense. I mean, I can well recall in my own analysis with, of course, for the first six months she said nothing, and I used to get very frustrated, and say, look, what do you think of this? What's your interpretation, she would say, oh, we don't know enough yet. She said I'm not sure. We'll have to wait and see. And for about six months, I didn't get anything. When interpretations were offered to me, she said so and so, and I said, why, and then she was ready. She said there was this female, that the other thing, and there was a whole long list of things... that pointed to this interpretation, and it was all part of a, as you say a great mass of data, that erm, is, is quite mind-bogglingly large, if you actually erm, see it in words. Erm, it's very difficult, of course, to er, well it's impossible actually, to turn that into er written accounts. Because of course if you were to tape record analytic sessions, it would change that nature of the, of the analysis. And er, one of the big scientific problems with psychoanalysis is that privacy and confidentiality are prominent, as obviously in other areas of science, you can er, the demonstration has to be in public, as it were. I mean, other people can do the experiment or repeat it. Trouble with an individual psychoanalysis, it can never be. So one of the big problems with an historical figure, is that erm, you don't even have that much data to go on, the data you have is gonna inevitably be, be selective and limited. Again I think if Freud and Bullitt were here today, they'd say, well look we did, in fact, have quite a lot of data, because I, Bullitt knew Wilson intimately for several years and worked with him, and er, Freud had rarely the stuff in erm, in all papers of Woodrow Wilson in the library of Congress or wherever they were, and he had a great deal of data. But even so, "s point is a good one, that there isn't, there's seldom if ever enough... this is a small problem in psychoanalysis, I myself hope to put right to some extent, and some of you may live long enough to see this happen, I hope you will. Er, that's why I'll tell you all, I even tell young people. There's no point in telling old people, because they'd be dead. But erm, there are one or two interesting exceptions to this, and one exception is myself, because er, I started analyzing myself through maybe to nineteen sixty nine, and with one or two small exceptions, like when I was being analyzed by and I didn't like it, with any doubt, my entire analysis was being written down. Erm, I guess now in fact, erm er, last few years is all er, is all er entered in data on computer. And it's my intention to keep up this analysis, er, for as long as it takes, probably to the end of my life. And that er, on the centenary of my birth, which will fall in two thousand and forty six, my heirs and executors will be free to er, release it to the world, on condition, however, that it's published complete and unexpurgated and unedited. In other words, if you're gonna have personal, you're gonna, it, you can't allow somebody to edit us out, as it were. And er, if and when it's published, there will be millions of words, I mean there are now, and I don't how large it is now, it's impossible to tell how large, erm, but just a couple of years, for example, amounts to over a quarter of a million words, so if you run that back to nineteen sixty nine, you see it is going to be one of the largest books ever written. And it maybe, if it's ever published, while we're still here in two thousand and forty six, and my executors do as I hope they will, erm, you know, it will be a book alongside Samuel Pepys, and Casanova and Saint Augustine, it's that length. My guess it's as least long as Samuel Pepys" diary, or will be. And I hope that, er, you know, this, all this data will be published, and people will be able to see just what the complete data is. And if that's the case, then in the middle of the next century, more will be known about me, than has ever been known about any other human being. Because I have faithfully stuck to the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. I have not held back anything. It's all true and it's all right. Of course, my own reputation will be the first victim of this. I will be universally despised. [LAUGHTER] But that's okay, I mean I'm not particularly, I'm not so impressed with the human race that I, I, I think much of their opinion of me anyway. But erm, the great pity of course is, that Freud didn't do this. It's, I mean, Freud we know, did do a certain analysis. My guess is, he must have written an account. It's a great pity he didn't preserve any detail, and he looked, er, like all his other papers had been left in the library of Congress until two thousand and twenty five, and then they will all become public. Erm, that would have been er, really worth knowing. But as I've said, it will, it will be preserved in my case. Erm, it's my great contribution to science, unfortunately I shall be long dead, and many of yo some of you may, I don't know how many of you will still be alive in two thousand and forty six, but if you are, you may see this day. I won't of course. But it's a, it's a problem that, that you've put your finger on, and this is why I personally think that a lot of this literature is of such a poor quality. And certainly this stuff, I mean, when a person's still alive, how can you possibly know enough? You see, Woodrow Wilson was dead, Bullitt had access to a lot of private material that er, perhaps there's still, I don't know whether it's ever been published. And of course, Bullitt had directly observed the man and interacted with him during the critical time at, at the Versailles conference. And the whole book is really about er the Versailles conference in a way, isn't it, and about why he behaved the way he did at the time. So there's a kind of critical period here, that we have got a lot of information about. And in a sense, the book is very one dimensional... in that it follows just this one aspect of Woodrow Wilson's character, the critical one. Now of course, in a, in a complete psychoanalysis, if Woodrow Wilson had been going for analysis, then all kinds of other aspects of his life and personality would have opened up. And you wouldn't get this concentration on one, this one kind of character defect, which er, admittedly, is a, is a problem with the book and, and can make it look as if it is a kind of character assassination. character assassination of Wilson?
[speaker002:] Erm, yes, perhaps.
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] Yes, but Freud does er justify this er meaning, that this is why to form a psychological
[Chris:] That's Because of his limitations...
[speaker002:] I was gonna further say that erm, you know, beside lack of information itself, information of repression, information into someone's life I mean, repression necessarily I mean the, the thing that someone does in their lifetime might necessarily strange and distracted, and the purpose of the thing
[Chris:] Well, yes, that, that's true but I think the, er, by the nineteen twenties, when Freud was writing this book, was it nineteen twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty nine,
[speaker002:] Er, well, certainly, yes.
[Chris:] They started it, yes. Right, so they, sorry, the early nineteen thirties, when they started it. By that time, Freud certainly had moved on a bit, from the earlier, perhaps rather narrow concentration on the repression and he was moving into the second er era of psycho psychoanalysis when there was an emphasis more on the total personality on the ego and its mechanisms of defence, to quote a title of a famous book by, and I think this is more the kind of thing that Freud is doing in this book, where you, you see not just the repressions in the unconscious, but the whole personality, and you understand it, in terms of its various defensive erm, structures, and the way which it carried out its repression. In other words, you concentrate not just on what's repressed in id, but on the structure of the ego as well, and the superego, and the course of nature part of it comes out in the book as told us that Woodrow Wilson had a tremendous superego in the form of his identification with his father, who he further identified with God, I mean, if I come over very critical indeed, and therefore, his own ego was identified with Jesus Christ. And this, for example, I mean, whether we believe this or not, this Freud says, or thinks, explains why Wilson could come to Europe as a saviour, the saviour of mankind, but then failed to deliver the goods, because of the passive nature of his identification, you know, Jesus got crucified. Which was a pretty passive thing to do, in some ways, erm, and similarly, you could say Woodrow Wilson ended up crucified by the, by the allies. A certain fourteen points for cruci [LAUGHTER] everybody must have that []. And, erm, so this, it was, in a sense it was not so much as what was repressed in his ears, the structure of his ego that led to this unfortunate consequence. Does that answer your... So it's part of this larger view of psychoanalysis that was emerging in the thirties. Where you could have more of a character study, rather than just the kind of erm, capping the unconscious, as it were
[speaker002:] Since like what you say, psychoanalysis was now, I mean, is it mostly centred on the ego? I mean, one, since you can't go if you don't
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] would you say that, you know, in modern psychoanalysis presumably just not the, like the structure of the ego, and then they know...
[Chris:] Wh what, well, I, I wouldn't say just looking similar, I would say additionally looking, but, but in the, in the early days... the erm, and I'll be saying something about this in the, in the lectures,bu but just briefly, that you could you could say there were phases in psychoanalysis, the early days, before both of us were born you were here, the, the aim when the method was, the aim was to release the unconscious, bring it to the surface, and that was regarded as more or less enough. Analyses in those days were short by modern standards. There's an example in my book, with one that only lasted six weeks, for example, which is astonishing by modern standards. After World War One, and especially by the nineteen thirties, the, the purview of psychoanalysis, as it were, had, had enlarged to include the ego, as we saw, and so, so what happened then was, the structure of the ego was explored and not just the repressions. In other words, it was the agencies that carried out the repressions that were analyzed, as well as the repressions themselves. This is a much more like a, a kind of total dissection of the personality. It means that psychoanalysis takes a lot longer, because you are looking at defences and ego as well as at, at the. You get a much more complete picture. Analogy I used in my book, was actually suggested to me by, although this is a ana a kind of metaphor that, that her father was very fond of. Erm, was with archaeology. But in the nineteenth century, archaeology was a kind of treasure-troving erm, explorers, a kind of raid on, on the very past, to discover the treasure. That's what psychoanalysis was like in its first days. We raided the unconscious, as it were, to, to liberate the repressed and, and, and understand what was in that. Modern archaeology is much more scientific and it's, it tends to excavate entire layers, layer, by layer and every little thing is relevant, you know, they, the little pot shard, erm, even bits of excrement, apparently are very interesting to archaeologists, because they're sure people were eating, and things like this, er, you know, remnants of fire was charcoal, everything. All of this is, is just good as well as bits of gold and er and, and you know metal objects, that have always traditionally been interesting to archaeologists. And that's rather like modern analysis, everything is interesting. It's not just what is repressed, it's the structures of the ego that bring about these repressions, the identifications and so on. So it's a more complete er picture, of, of, of the personality, and of course it lends itself to this kind of historical portraiture. Because as says, er, the unconscious is, as a sense, is always hidden, so how do you possibly find out about the unconscious of historical figures that are dead and gone? Well, the answer is with very very great difficulty. But if you were looking at their egos as well, er their whole personality had its defence disrupted, then of course, you may be able to see a bit more, because you are now looking at areas which are co both conscious and manifest themselves in all kinds of different ways. Does that answer your, your point?
[speaker002:] Yeah, I suppose I was thinking, I, I always get mixed up when you say psychoanalysis
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] I just want to you know modern days was just confusing me and er, all this sort of thing. Whereas I think it easy, you know sometimes I get confused about what's what
[Chris:] Right. So, when, when I talk about psychoanalysis in this course, I mean mainly Freudian classical, because it's Freud's writings we're looking at. Admittedly, another aspect of the whole thing, as you rightly say, is that there's been a burgeoning and a lot of different schools, and of course different schools give emphasis to different, different kinds of things. And that's a further complicating factor, of course. Well, it's just coming up to eleven o'clock, who haven't we heard from, er, right, you've been very very quiet there. There. Have you got anything, any comments you want to say about this?
[speaker002:] I mean, I didn't read the book.
[Chris:] No. No.
[speaker002:] Er, I must admit I... point Freud makes, slightly arrogant erm, I mean it, he's, he's, he's a
[Chris:] Yeah. Mm.
[speaker002:] His father's you know there's peace conference in nineteen eighteen
[Chris:] Yeah. Did you think that, that, that, that their approach was arrogant and their, the, the affect was trivializing?
[speaker002:] Well, not really, no. that weren't the impression that I got.
[Chris:] The actual book, arise that book anyhow, mm. But it's certainly er, certainly a valid question. Yeah.
[speaker002:] Woodrow Wilson Well, that's what Freud also subject on. But I know that such a talented writer. You know, I mean, I was convinced that there was no such thing as religion after I'd read the book [LAUGHTER] I mean, anything I read about, I immediately say, oh yes, of course that's true, you know. So.
[Chris:] Well, next week, will be telling us about another one of these very controversial books, won't you?
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Chris:] In which we shall be looking at, er another famous figure, but, but, er an even more remote and one, some people might say,mytho mythological one, namely Moses. So having done Woodrow Wilson this week, we will do Moses, next week. We'll look forward to that. Is anybody Jewish, by the way? Right. Well, one year, I must admit, somebody in the class stormed out. The person started to read their paper on Moses, and I thought she was doing a good job of it, this guy suddenly got up and said, I'm Jewish, I'm not listening to any more of this, and stormed out.
[speaker002:] Oh, I don't see that. Erm, what is the most,
[Chris:] Right. Er, that is in, that is in er, Hampstead,. If you wanna get there...
[speaker002:] I'm just
[Chris:] the easiest way to do it, is to take the underground to Finchley Road Station...
[speaker002:] Finchley Road Station. Mhm.
[Chris:] And when you come out of Finchley Road Station, it's in a place called. I may be able to give you a thing about it actually, if I've still got one.... You can visit it, it's open... it's best to phone up and find out when they're open, because they're not open every day.
[speaker002:] And they interesting?
[Chris:] Well, there's... I mean it's interesting, erm, it's Freud's you know, collection of, of classical and antique. They, they give the impression that the house is the way it was when he lived there, but it's not quite true, actually, it was earlier on. Erm, it's, it's certainly a lot smarter than could remember when lived there. Erm, and now let's see... I used to have a file on this, but I might have... passed it or given all the stuff away...
[speaker002:] Is it?
[Chris:] Yeah, it probably is. Yes, that's, that's the kind of place you would find it. Erm, that is the kind of place you would...
[speaker002:] Alright. Well, if you suddenly find it, you know...
[Chris:] Er, don't despair, I haven't finished yet, erm... Ah, here we are, Freud I knew I had it, I knew I had it. They used to write to me quite regularly... Here you are.
[speaker002:] Great. Thank you.
[Chris:] As I said, check the opening hours, they've probably changed.
[speaker002:] Okay.
[Chris:] That tells you where it is, and the phone numbers.
[speaker002:] Great. Thank you. Erm,
[Chris:] Yes
[speaker002:] to make an appointment.
[Chris:] Yeah, the reason is, we have to discuss your erm, your reports and so on. Erm, what were we going to do today?
[speaker002:] A lot of
[Chris:] Right. Okay. Well, let's make an appointment, then. When would be convenient?
[speaker002:] Well, I finish at, about, about twelve on Tuesdays, and work on Wednesday.
[Chris:] Right. Won't be here next Wednesday? What about next Tuesday? Could you, what's on at twelve, twelve thirty. I'm showing a film at one. I mean, you are in in the afternoon on Tuesday?
[speaker002:] I might, yes.
[Chris:] Yeah, the trouble with that, I'll have to make you wait till four thirty, is that too long?
[speaker002:] Erm, well, what about Thursday?
[Chris:] Thursday, yes, no no, next Thursday's easier. What about next Thursday, what time could you?
[speaker002:] Erm, between
[Chris:] You've got a lecture?
[speaker002:] Erm, I mean one and two.
[Chris:] Between one and two?
[speaker002:] Or after three.
[Chris:] Or after three. Erm, yeah, let's make it at three. Can we make it at three next Thursday, after the lecture?
[speaker002:] Right.
[Chris:] So after next Thursday's lecture, twenty eighth, at three o'clock.
[speaker002:] Right,
[Chris:] Okay.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[Chris:] See you then,. Thanks very much.
[speaker002:] Bye.
[Chris:] Okay,, come on, come and sit down.
[speaker002:] Well, I was erm, I just heard, you wanted me to come in, erm, I'm doing a, a paper on Monday.
[Chris:] Oh, that's right. That's right.
[speaker002:] But erm
[Chris:] And you were going to...
[speaker002:] you wanted me er, to give you a run through of it.
[Chris:] Well, well, I su I suggested that this will be helpful, which it will be, will it?
[speaker002:] Erm, well the thing is that I still erm, in the process of doing research and reading and gathering a
[Chris:] Alright. I mean, we did reports, we did those, yeah
[speaker002:] lot of ideas about getting an idea about did you, am I in the class just now? I went to erm, the registration
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] it says I haven't been put on the list. Am I on it?
[Chris:] Er, well, they hadn't notified me, but they probably, you told them anyway, did you?
[speaker002:] Yeah,
[Chris:] Because that's the important thing. Erm, yeah the important thing is that they know. I mean, I know, I've, I've written it down myself.
[speaker002:] Erm
[Chris:] Okay, you say you're still...
[speaker002:] Right, yeah
[Chris:] You're still doing this
[speaker002:] I didn't think the question that erm, the question culture was the same as our culture.
[Chris:] Right.
[speaker002:] And erm, read about the book so far, and I'm going through erm,
[Chris:] Okay.
[speaker002:] Why?
[Chris:] Well, there's no need now, I mean, I only suggested this erm, to help you, er, and I wouldn't want to make you write it out er, just for the sake of writing it out. It don't think it's a good use of your time. And I mean, if you think that just presenting it in the, in the class is er enough... [tape stopped and restarted]
[speaker002:] send it down to use yourself, but to be able to carry that through and to, to go on to, to be sincere, and I respect that it's important to be sincere. If you, you know, talk about people moral values and to be able to do that, and just majority of anything you need to you need to have a that allows you to do that without
[Chris:] Yes, yeah. Yes, it's very important to remember that both in, from this direct point of view and from Freud's findings, you shouldn't just assume that it was a watertight compartment between two areas, as it were. One conscious and un it's not like that. I mean, in fact, what, what er, what Freud found, he says is sometimes, you get erm, this is in fact a kind of continuing from conscious and unconscious, and there's a big gradation in between, and very often erm, things are erm, unconscious, not in the sense that they're totally lost, and you are unaware of them, but for example, they're, they're isolated. They, they, they exist erm,princ a very common finding in psychoanalysis is that things will, will, will exist as word representations, with no feeling representation, or they won't be connected to, to er [cough] they'd be completely isolated. You know, a very good example of this, that always sticks in my mind, telling me erm, that once she was analyzing a woman and er, a lot of the analysis was concerned with erm, conflicts, erm, relating to masturbation in childhood, and constantly felt that this was what the analysis seemed to have done, because the woman consistently denied this had ever happened. Absolutely denied, she'd ever done that. Then one day, said she described something she often used to do in childhood, habitually did. And she had a special name for it, I can't remember what is was now, but it was an innocuous word, like erm [cough] erm, kneading, or something like that, something you do with your fingers. Erm, and said, okay, that's what you called it in childhood, you called, say kneading, if that's what it was. She said, now, supposing you had to look up what you just described, you know, in a dictionary, and find a word that everybody would associate with it. What word would you find? And she said, the woman thought for a minute, and suddenly she gasped when said that's masturbation, isn't it? And said, yes. And she said, but I've always known I did that. And, you see, she'd known it, but it had been entered under another word, in her mind. As she didn't connect it with what everyone else calls masturbation. You know, er, that's a horrible thing that other people do. She had her own... term for it, and as long as it was purely associated with that term, she never connected it. And that's quite a typical finding. That things remain unconscious, not because you never knew about them, but because they're never brought into the relevant connections with other things that make you conscious of the thing in the sense of seeing what's in it for Mrs... you know, reports. So we're not saying it's a question of conscious unconscious, or rigid demarcation where we are actually talking about subtle gradations of consciousness, from complete self conscious awareness at one end, to total loss of all memory of the thing at, at, at the other. And everything in the [cough] between, and most stuff is in between, as a matter of fact. So I think you're right, it's a very very important, erm, and, and often in life, you can find people switch from one to the other with astonishing speeds. I mean, some people have kind of butterfly minds, with butterfly behaviour, and they switch from being one type of person or another type of person almost minute by minute. You just can't keep up with them. I mean what does this, you know, what is, is this? I mean, do to have this astonishing capacity of switch all the time. You just don't know, know where you are with them. Well, that was interesting, it was interesting discussion, er, thanks to an excellent paper, we're, we're, we're delighted, and that was first rate. Who did I say was next week? Right. We look forward to hearing from you next week,. Sorry I've got to throw you out on time, but I've got another appointment at four. [cough] Er,, did you see him about that?
[speaker002:] Erm, yes I did the only problem
[Chris:] Yeah. You don't have a
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER] [talk simultaneous]
[Chris:] Ah, well, keep our fingers crossed. Tell me if there's anything I can do.
[speaker002:] Okay.
[Chris:] Yeah. Well, what did you think of the film,? Had you seen it before?
[speaker002:] I hated it. It is a bit, is er is er is a bit odd. I suppose you liked it?
[Chris:] Well, I must say I liked it, er, I mean, I showed it because er suggested it. I thought it filled in the, the kind of, some of the biographical kind of things we don't have time to do in the course.
[speaker002:] was interesting. I mean, the general, I mean
[Chris:] Yeah yeah. You think I should show it in the future years? Perhaps not.
[speaker002:] Er, it depends
[Chris:] Yeah, yeah. Fine. The... sexual aperitif. Yeah, it did.
[speaker002:] Er.
[Chris:] Yeah, yeah, have a look, hold on. Thanks for the book.
[speaker002:] Alright.
[Chris:] Oh, you sure you can spare it?
[speaker002:] Yeah, I've no more lectures until your one on Thursday.
[Chris:] Well, can I give it to you back on Thursday?
[speaker002:] Yeah, that's wonderful.
[Chris:] You sure you won't need it till then? I'll keep it under lock and key, many thanks. Ah, right, so how are you?
[speaker002:] Oh, I'm fine, thank you.
[Chris:] Put that save. Make sure I don't lose that. Okay. Right, so, and you're going to the, what's the seminar at five is it or
[speaker002:] That's right, oh, yes, I received this letter.
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] I don't know if you've heard about it?
[Chris:] No.
[speaker002:] Erm, well, I was
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] and I mean, I considered myself to have been like, er, frequent, or erm, whatever. So er, on the last seminar, they all talked about sending out letters to all the students who weren't there the attendance was very low, and I received one, but
[Chris:] Right.
[speaker002:] enough. And er, I was also asked why I had offered to and I'd already spoken to the students' secretary about it.
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] So I wrote back to and
[Chris:] Mm. Yeah.
[speaker002:] I'm not giving the paper for health reasons. I have been
[Chris:] Right. I will, I will mention, I didn't know they were sending out such a letter, otherwise I would have er, told them in advance. But I will
[speaker002:] I'm on the street for the moment
[Chris:] I, absolutely, I'll, I'll speak to everyone, don't worry.
[speaker002:] I mean, don't worry
[Chris:] So are you, are you be going to seminar?
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Chris:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] Yeah, [whispering] I have to []. Thing is [whispering] I, I just I can't work [].
[Chris:] No.
[speaker002:] I [whispering] go sick
[Chris:] No.
[speaker002:] somehow I haven't been able to work
[Chris:] No, okay.
[speaker002:] because I'm really worried
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] when I think about it I think I just can't work, it's like, I've lost interest whenever I find some I feel I'm able to keep up
[Chris:] Mm
[speaker002:] which is something I
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] I mean want to I have considered going back to er, training and cancel this
[Chris:] Right, I see, what dropping this altogether?
[speaker002:] Er, no, I'd like to come in.
[Chris:] Mm.
[speaker002:] I mean I don't particularly like
[Chris:] Mm. Yeah.
[speaker002:] and perhaps after that come back to
[Chris:] Right.
[speaker002:] I really []
[Chris:] Well, the, I mean the, the thing about the end fill is...