A Marathon Reading of ‘Massenpsychologie’ at Freud’s House in London

On YouTube, you can watch the encounter between black British Guardianjournalist Gary Younge and American white nationalist Richard Spencer (6 November 2017). Younge proceeds as if the normal rules of question and answer apply, but Spencer’s speech takes no account of that and just becomes increasingly offensive and racist as the three minutes tick by. Younge and, no doubt, the hapless viewer become increasingly distressed. Spencer is not lying – he is disavowing the very idea of truth, forcing jouissance onto the other, separating him from his trusted assumptions about truth and the familiar pathways of reason. Try as he may, Younge cannot get a purchase on the conversation because it simply doesn’t occur to him that truth may have no place in the equation for Spencer. 

As the scenario unfolds, one gets a sense that physical violence is not far away. Indeed, there is a whole series of YouTube clips that show how close the violence is. In a different set of videos, in an exchange between another interviewer and a well-dressed, quietly-spoken Spencer in New York on Trump’s Inauguration Day, January 2017, Spencer is stating that he is not a Nazi or a member of the alt-right, and he says, in fact, that ‘they hate me’. It is when the interviewer notices a cute little lapel badge on Spencer’s smart jacket and Spencer begins to explain ‘Oh, yes, that’s Pepe the Frog’ that violence crashes in from one side of the frame. A hooded figure jumps in and punches Spencer in the head. The video clip that I was watching had been edited and set to a track called ‘Blue Monday’, by the band New Order. There are many different versions of this clip, each with different music, each one making use of the beat of the music to repeat the moment of the punch. The unpleasant amount of jouissance that was mounting in this viewer got transformed into laughter by the artistry of the video and left the body with the force of a gale.  

It is not a question of whether it is ‘right or wrong to punch a Nazi’, which was posed by the next video, automatically cued to play after this clip. That would be the never-ending argument awaiting anyone who can’t allow themselves to laugh at Spencer’s temporary discomfiture. The real question is whois going to be the object of the inevitable violence, and when. In Younge’s encounter, no one actually got punched in the head, but both the viewer and Younge ‘take a hit’ from Spencer’s jouissance that truly takes time and effort to recover from.  

Let’s just go back and take a look at that lapel badge. Pepe the Frog is the best-known meme associated with the alt-right. It is often to be seen asserting white supremacist ideas on various chatrooms and social media platforms. Despite its origin having nothing to do with the alt-right, Pepe the Frog was added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols in 2016. As we continue into the early years of this 21^stcentury, it is going to become more and more important to understand how superficially anodyne images and signifiers, or even statements like ‘we are not racists’ (a constant trope in the PR strategy of the Football Lads Association), become mobilised and play a role in the mass channelling of jouissance in potentially (and sometimes actually) wild, destructive ways. What is operating when a mass starts moving? How are we taking our bearings in the new societal arrangements that are emerging in the post-paternal era? What accounts for the triumph of masses today? 

These are some of the questions that are being addressed by a growing group of readers as they prepare to take part in a marathon reading of Freud’s classic text, Massenpsychologie. We are going to read it in English at the Freud Museum on Midsummer’s Day in what could be called ‘a reflexive performance’. We are gathering ‘en masse’ at Freud’s house to take it in turns to read a few pages each of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego(Hogarth Press, 1955). There is already a debate about the translation – is it only those who identify as ‘English’ who pledge allegiance to Strachey’s translation? Our European colleagues seem quicker to pick up the new translation by J.O. Underwood (Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the ‘I’, Penguin, 2005). The text will be read in English, but in a range of different accents, both regional and international. 

What makes this event especially poignant is that it will take place 80 years after Freud arrived in London; the Nazis had annexed Austria in March 1938, and Ernest Jones had gone to fetch Freud, mobilising help in France from Marie Bonaparte and William Bullitt (the American Ambassador), and in England from Lord De La Warr, the Lord Privy Seal (see Chapter VI of Volume III of Jones’s biography of Freud).

In the opening lines of his text, Freud proposes that the difference between individual and social psychology is not as great as one might think. In trying to understand and to be a part of the subjectivity of ‘our times’, we could do worse than approach the questions via Freud’s observations. Changes in the social context are linked to the subjectivity of each one, but how? Our poster of the murmuration of starlings gives a clue to the spirit of the time and encourages us to think again about how we act in relation to others, how we unconsciously identify with them. These murmurations are frequently used as motifs in the context of mass migration. Freud was careful to mark the difference between a horde with a leader and some kind of organisation, and a herd without one, but today, with the aid of the internet, we seem to have greater masses of people acting without obvious leaders but being mobilised by master signifiers nonetheless. Pepe the Frog is one example of an unlikely ‘leader’ for our times. As the old master signifiers become redundant, and the traditions and hierarchies of order that they used to command lose their power, we see great masses of ‘equalised’ subjects, ‘the people’, rallying behind phrases and symbols of identification. 

We shall have some fun. We shall do some work. We shall take up some space. We shall bring Freud to life in London, and we may even be on TV. Yes, the BBC has chosen that very weekend to film a documentary about contemporary civilisations and their discontents. 

Come! Gather! Add your voice to Freud’s words in the house in which he found refuge and where he completed ‘Moses and Monotheism’. This will be an organised reading, with participants preparing their contribution in advance: if you would like to be considered as a reader, please get in touch by end of May (at the latest). 

The Freud Museum has generously offered to host the reading and to provide refreshments for performers and listeners alike who wish to stay to discuss the ideas and questions that the reading will surely raise. The event itself is free when you purchase an entry ticket to the museum (on the door, or online).

Janet Haney

London

13 April 2018

Published by Lacanion Review Online, 16 April 2018

Three Girls II: Guilt and shame in adolescence / humiliation* in adulthood – the contemporary UK hero.

 

In episode three of the BBC drama [see previous blog, 7 June], Holly takes the stand at the trial and says: ‘I am not guilty, but I am ashamed.’ It is a powerful moment in the drama, and it is not difficult to imagine that her transition from denial (of guilt) to acknowledgement (of shame) has allowed her to stay calm and speak truthfully in spite of the aggression of the lawyer who is acting on behalf of the defendants. It was her way to navigate from child to adult, from girl to woman. She acknowledged that she felt shame. The prefix ‘ac’ indicates a movement towards knowledge and away from pure sensation. She has discovered that she can tolerate the feelings that rise in her body and still continue to think. This allows her to speak on the public stage of a witness box, to act without aggression, without blushing, without getting flustered – her body is calm, her voice does not contain defiance, resentment or bitterness. In this way, she becomes a credible witness and the law finds its way. Her friend Amber did not navigate through this particular path and so she never lost the tone of voice, the mode of body language, that left her prey to the label of ‘not credible’.

Neither did the men who were convicted.

So, what was Holly ashamed of that Amber was not? It is a question that the drama does not ask, and so it is a question that the drama does not attempt to answer. But I wonder if it has something to do with their fathers.

Holly’s father was depicted as a man who had been felled. He seemed to have lost his job, and was depicted at home and unable to support, much less protect, his family. As long as he did not overcome the shame he perceived as pertaining to that position, he was unable to help his daughter, and was instead left to oscillate between permissiveness and strictness. The trajectory of Holly’s father was a side story to this particular TV drama, but there was one scene which showed him tolerating his weakness (showing up outside the house where Amber ruled the roost) and being subjected to a social humiliation, supported by his wife but nevertheless persisting in his desire to detach his daughter from the group. That scene ends with the camera holding the face of Amber, whose quiet tear at the window suggests that she might, at that moment, have recognised her own lack of such a figure to love and by loved by in her own life.

These girls are teenagers during the main stages of the drama (Holly is 14 and Amber is 16). Teenagers, adolescents – this is a construct of our particular society. It is a kind of rehearsal room or limbo that we have constructed between childhood and adulthood which might be used to give youngsters a second or even third chance.[1] This is not a view that is often articulated, and the lack of thought leads to confusion and even to cynicism. The drama shows this cynicism especially clearly in some of the police officers in the early interviews with Holly. It also shows it in the social services staff. One social worker, when faced with a pregnant teenager, seems unable to reconcile herself to the idea that a 'child' (in the eyes of the law) can be pregnant. For her, the knowledge of sex pushes the girl into another category, perhaps into that of 'adult' – someone who is no longer this social worker's responsibility. So, to justify her self-image as 'child social worker' she pretends great interest in the foetus whose future she begins planning as if the mother did not exist. The teenager vanishes from the category of child, but is not absorbed by the category of adult, hence she just vanishes from that social worker's view. This is lazy, cynical thinking.

Someone who is neither cynical nor lazy is Sara Rowbotham, the sexual-health worker (played in the drama by Maxine Peake). Sarah also persists, and is also in a position that represents our society’s rules and mores. She also demonstrates an ability to think rationally in spite of the fact that she has to tolerate the humiliation of a job which we see being routinely sidelined by a kind of social service that is less and less linked to reality. This glimpse of institutional employment reminds me a bit of some scenes in I, Daniel Blake. Sarah is not ashamed of the girls’ sexuality, and manages to tolerate her humiliations at the hands of other parts of society’s structure. She manages to hold onto the possibility for these youngsters to exit adolescence without guilt, resentment, or a wish for revenge.

And what about the questions of culture, religion and race – the groups and groupings that presented themselves as explainers of behaviour? The drama proved itself worthy of the word ‘culture’. It presented the complexity of issues at play in this drama, and left a space for the viewers to bring their own intelligence to bear. If Holly, her father, and Sara Rowbotham succeeded, it was because they each found their own way out of the morass of the various groups that they might have belonged to. Holly managed to exit the gaggle of girls, her father came to terms with being alone and out of work, and Sarah persisted even though the work groups rejected her work. In the end, none of these key players sacrificed their own desire in order to remain part of a group. This is why each one emerges as a kind of hero, thus contributing to a kind of society that might be worth being part of. That the two women had to lose their formal recognition of paid employment to do it, and in the public services of police and social care, does not bode so well for any of us.

PS Former police officer Margaret Oliver’s arc in the story follows the same heroic path. All three of the heroic adults in this story find themselves outside our current UK society’s structures.

Dramatist – Nicole Taylor), director – Philippa Lowthorpe), producer – BBC in collaboration with Studio Lambert.

*Humble, etymologically means ‘close to the ground’. It come via Old French umble from Latin humbles ‘low, lowly’. This was a derivative of humus ‘earth’, which is related to English chameleon and human and was itself acquired by English in the 18th century. In post-classical times the verb humiliate was formed from humilis, and English gets humiliate [16] from it. [Source: Bloomsbury Dictionary of Word Origins edited by John Ayto, 1990.]

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[1] See Jacques Alain Miller, “In the Direction of Adolescence”, forthcoming in The Lacanian Review, No 4. Autumn 2017.

ZADIG – the application form

 La Movida Zadig

                                        Zadig Nosce Tempus

I would like to join the network "Zadig Nosce Tempus" on the basis of its "orientation table" of Lacan Voltaire Weil, published in the brochure, "la Movida Zadig" Issue No. 1, that came out on 20 May 2017. 

I certify that I am not a member of a political party, nor an agent of entryism or of infiltration of any such organization. I accept that if I were to become a member or an agent of a political party, I would cease ipso facto to be part of this network. 

My name:……………………………………………………………………………………………….

My profession:…………………………………………………………………………………………               

My credentials:……………………………………………………………………………………………….

My diplomas or absence thereof:………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

My email address:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

My telephone number (preferably cell phone) :………………………………………………………………………………………

(city):…………………………………………………………………., (date):…………………………………………………………

signed :

This letter or a copy of this letter is to be sent by postal mail only to this address: ZNT, Square Vergote 51 – 1030 Brussels – Belgium.

NB : No subscriptions or contributions are due; Zadig Nosce Tempus is not a non-profit organization, but rather a contact network intended to be followed by diverse impetuses, among which its inventor, J.-A. Miller, is for the moment playing a determining role.   

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Zadig. A radically decentralised, flexible and interplanar organisation.

The UK can heave a sigh of relief now that Theresa May has been brought back down to earth on the question of her real worth – “strong and stable, my arse!” as artist Jeremy Deller so eloquently put it.

We can go back and pick up the threads of our lives while Parliament considers its options. I find the idea of a hung parliament very appealing right now, and not only because it gives time to stop and think. Simone Weil’s slim tome “On the Abolition of all Political Parties” is sitting on our kitchen table, the translators note alone is worth the price of the book! Listen: “Once in a blue moon, on strictly non-political issues, dealing purely with questions of ethics, members of Parliament are allowed to make a ‘conscience vote.’ A conscience vote – what an extraordinary notion! It should be a pleonasm: don’t we all assume that every vote – by definition – is being made by MPs who listen to their consciences, instead of following some diktat from a political party?” (translator: Simon Leys.)

The word ‘vote’ is etymologically linked to the word wish. It is not simply a voice, but a voice that has thought and desire behind it. Without thought and desire there can be no ethical position, no ethical action. It is the opposite of what you can expect from an automaton. It is a position in which one can respond to an event and invent some new solutions. Response-able. Responsible.

As you know, I am off to Paris today to be ready for a meeting tomorrow organised by Envers de Paris. And in July I am going to the PIPOL meeting in Brussels which is organised by the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis. In London I belong to the London Society of the New Lacanian School. The NLS (itself, one of 7 schools that make up the World Association of Psychoanalysis) includes societies and groups in several different countries. The Lacanian community of psychoanalysts is made up of practitioners who are fixed to a spot (at least some of the time) and who also move around a lot. Psychoanalysis has even been described as the 7th continent – created through its ideas and language, and sustained through the movement of its members, travelling across geography to speak to each other in person. There is a wide network that operates across a several land masses, national borders, and languages. The network changes its form over time. It depends. And right now, as Jacques-Alain Miller put it when he spoke after the defeat of Marine Le Pen in the French Presidential elections (he was speaking in Madrid on 13 May): “we are in engaged in a long-term effort which demands a new vehicle, a radically decentralised, flexible and interplanar organisation, capable of perpetuating and extending the unprecedented alliances which have been knotted in the context of the Forums.”

 Miller proposes an Alpha Network, known familiarly as Zadig (recalling the novel of Voltaire). It would be a way to think without feet of clay but without leaving the planet either. “Zero Abjection Democratic International Group” [La Movida Zadig]. Patricia Bosquin-Caroz, the current President of PIPOL, has taken up Miller’s proposal and made this the theme for Sunday’s programme for the PIPOL meeting in July: “The rise of populism in Europe: what is the response of politicians, intellectuals and psychoanalysts?”.

“Practitioners in the analytic orientation, whether they are in private practice or in mental health institutions, are learning how to outfox the modern Master, to give him the slip, to find another way; off the beaten track.” (Patricia Bosquin-Caroz, translation by Raphael Montague)

This presents an especial challenge to those of us who work in the UK whose trajectory has been set to leave the EU. It is indeed a challenge. But today’s election result shifts the prospects once again. It is a challenge. We have to make sure we are up to it.