Totalitarian Democratic Neurosis Or The Factory Of Desires

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Relationship of key concepts

The starting point of this study is the age-old question of the meaning of human existence. An obsessive return to this issue in all epochs of the formation of mankind is associated not with some mystical factor that prevents its final resolution, but primarily with the fact that the answer to it can be given each time only on the basis of the actual situation, hic et nunc. This situation implies not only the subject environment of a person, but also the paradigm with which he approaches the solution of this problem. In different epochs, mythology, religion, science gave the answer to this question. In the current paradigm, the essence of a person, his functioning in society can be viewed from the standpoint of linguistics and psychology, united by structural psychoanalysis, based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Ferdinand de Saussure.

First, however, consider the problem of meaning as such. It is known, for example, that the biological meaning of an animal's existence is self-preservation and procreation. Thus, the meaning here lies in a certain goal, the achievement of which certain types of activities serve. The latter, in turn, are prompted from within by drives or desires: to satisfy hunger and relieve sexual tension. According to Freud, such an impulse is an internal tension striving for relaxation, and desire is the movement of the soul towards a representation with which satisfaction is associated, i.e. discharge.

“The hungry child screams helplessly and flounders. The situation remains, however, unchanged, since the irritation arising from the inner need corresponds not to an instantaneous pushing force, but to a continuously acting force. A change can come only if in some way the child, thanks to outside help, experiences a feeling of satisfaction that eliminates internal irritation. An essential part of this experience is the presence of a certain perception, the memory of which from that moment on is associated forever with the memory of satisfaction.

As soon as the next time this need manifests itself, now, thanks to the existing association, a psychic movement is triggered, which seeks to evoke the memory of the first perception, in other words, to reproduce the situation of the previous satisfaction. It is this mental movement that we call desire; the repeated manifestation of perception is the fulfillment of desire, and the complete restoration of perception of the sensation of satisfaction is the shortest path to such fulfillment."

(Z. Freud "Interpretation of Dreams", (13; 427 - 428))

Thus, leaning on the psychoanalytic paradigm, one can schematically represent meaning as a goal and a striving for it. In his work "Attractions and Their Fates" Freud speaks of them as an attraction and an object. The latter, however, are not rigidly welded: an attraction can change its object (11; 104). Freud's predecessor Arthur Schopenhauer speculatively comes to similar conclusions drawn by Freud on the basis of his practical research, speaking of self-consciousness, the subject of which is desire itself, and of the consciousness of other things, containing forms that determine the way things appear, which serve as conditions for the possibility of their objective being, i.e. their being as objects for man. Self-awareness as desire fills these forms in contact with the outside world (14; 202, 205).

So, on the one hand, we correlate the concepts of "desire" and "meaning", and on the other, we come to understand the meaning as something that can be split. Moreover, such an approach to understanding the meaning can also go beyond the very problem of the meaning of human existence. It can be said that splitting is a characteristic property of meaning in general. In this context, the meaning of the word suggests itself as an example. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, the word, as a linguistic sign, splits into the signified and the signifier (denotatum and connotatum), and both of these layers can shift relative to each other (86; 156). Despite the fact that Freud analyzed the brother of the famous linguist and was obviously familiar with this theory, he still does not draw any parallels with it in his works. Over time, when psychoanalysis left the scientific and biological orbit set by Freud and entered the cultural sphere, his followers did it for him. Jacques Lacan's unification of psychoanalysis and linguistics gives rise to a new era in the formation of thought in European civilization, the era of structuralism.

Formulation of the problem

Now, having considered the essence of the key concept for us, let's get closer to the topic of this study. A serious psychological problem of our time, which can be stated not only by specialists, but also by ordinary people, is that more and more people complain about the loss of meaning in life, and as a result, about apathy, anxiety, the inability to enjoy anything, that is,.e. exhibit all those symptoms that together can be combined with the term "neurasthenia", or more modern - "neurotic depression" (1; 423). Based on the above, we can assume that the reason for this may be either the absence of desire in itself, or the absence of an object to which this desire could be directed. However, if we consider that desire is an inalienable property of every living being, since the reduction of all stresses to zero is an equilibrium state of death, then the first assumption should be rejected, and one should turn to the idea that something is wrong with the object in the world of modern man. But in order to understand the deviation, you must first determine the norm. So, we need to figure out what this object should be. To this end, let us turn to the structural psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan. Lacan, relying on the ideas of Otto Rank, argues that a person is born into the world traumatized, split: from him that which was before birth is simultaneously his world and himself - his mother. All further human existence, thus, is a striving for the acquisition of the former integrity. However, a person can always find his missing part only in the Other, even if he looks at himself in the mirror (3; 219 - 224). A person has to construct himself from objects external to him, and it is these details of the constructor given to him by the world that become the object of desire. With the exit of a person into the world of the Symbolic, these details can be not only (and not even so much) objects and other people, but also words, texts. The only question is how we can adapt the elements given to us in order to try to build something whole; how to determine if a particular idea of an object or another person is suitable for us. This brings us to the problem of the authenticity of the object of desire. On the basis of the child's primary, infantile sexual relations with the most important figures of his childhood, after the final separation of a person into culture, he develops a certain circle of ideas about the phenomena of the world, genetically related to the primary objects of desires with the help of mechanisms known to psychoanalysis. And although the desire of an adult is always a distorted desire of a child, i.e. shifted from the primary object to some other, the criterion of its authenticity can be the presence of a genetic connection between the idea of an "adult" object and the child's object of desire. If there is no such genetic connection, then such a new object is only a surrogate, unable to bring pleasure, i.e. satisfy the desire. Its achievement requires no less energy costs, but when it is achieved, it still does not organically fit into the image of a person's own I and cannot serve to gain the meaning of its existence, which consists in achieving integrity. This is a compromise squared. Its achievement depletes the human psyche, bringing nothing in return. Pathogenesis This raises the question of the specifics of modern society as an external cause of the loss of meaning. Why is this problem so acute now? The difference between modern society and previous societies can be seen in its insufficient structuredness. The domination of religion or ideology in former times rigidly determined the system of values to which the interest of a person was to be directed. And even if such values did not correspond to the initial predisposition of a particular subject, then his goal could, at least, become opposing himself to them, gaining freedom from them. And this, in turn, required a person to perform an act that in itself could become an object that completes the subject to the whole, in which he could assert himself. Sisyphus rejoiced, again and again pushing his stone up the hill; but it was not the stone that was the object of his desire, but the myth of who became himself against divine will. A myth is a text that a creature from the Symbolic world can weave into the canvas of his life scenario, thus creating a complete image of his own I.

“Previous dictatorships feared freedom of speech, eradicated dissent, imprisoned writers, and burned freedom-loving books.

The glorious times of the vile auto-da-fe made it possible to separate the lambs from the goats, the good from the evil.

Advertising totalitarianism is a much more subtle thing, it is easy to wash your hands here.

This type of fascism has learned well the lessons of the failures of previous regimes - in Berlin in 1945 and in Berlin in 1989.

(I wonder why both of these barbaric dictatorships ended up in the same city?).

To turn humanity into slavery, advertising has chosen the path of corrosive, skillful suggestion.

This is the first system of domination of man over man in history, against which even freedom is powerless.

Moreover, she - this system - made her weapon out of freedom, and this is her most ingenious find.

Any criticism only flatters her, any pamphlet only strengthens the illusion of her corny tolerance.

She subdues you in the most elegant way. Everything is allowed, no one will touch you as long as you put up with this mess.

The system has achieved its goal: even disobedience has become a form of obedience."

(Frederic Beigbeder "99 Francs")

The modern democratic society imposes on a person a heavy burden of freedom of choice. The layer of objects to which desire can be directed becomes more and more extensive and mobile, and the process of their choice by the subject now requires a certain amount of time from him so that he can understand himself. In addition, such a choice has to be made almost constantly, since the psyche, as a dynamic system, is constantly in the process of changes, and each new mutual arrangement of certain representations in it requires a corresponding correlate in the world of objects through which these representations can be realized. But as soon as a person has a new demand for the world for an object, at this time society, without hesitation, seeks to satisfy it, offering the potential consumer the objects of desires and not particularly worrying about the presence of a genetic connection between them and his initial attitudes. Using Schopenhauer's phraseology, we can say that society makes empty forms into which a person can cast his initially raw and formless desire. Such an object, pretending to mean one representation, but in fact meaning something else, Lyotard called a simulacrum. And if Saussure wrote that layers of signifiers and signifieds can mutually shift in diachrony, i.e.in the course of the historical development of the language, and in synchronicity (10; 128 - 130, 177 - 181), i.e. at a given historical moment, they are more or less rigidly interconnected, but now the semantic fields have expanded so much that the same object on the maps of the subject and society is located in completely different ways and means different objects of the real territory. Thus, having hooked on the signifier of the idea of the object of his desire, genetically related to the subject, it is possible, by formal associative connection, to shift from it to another signifier, which does not have such a genetic connection with the basic ideas of the subject. With the constant change by society of the position of the symbol on the map, a person constantly strives to achieve a false goal, and as soon as he sees its falseness and does not receive satisfaction, he must use all his strength for its subsequent achievement in a new form. Constant dissatisfaction leads to an obsessive repetition of certain actions, with the performance of which society associates the subject with the possibility of achieving the desired object. But apart from everything else, the object of representation can be not only external to a person; it can also be his idea of his own self. Incorporating the changeable texts offered by society, a person is in a state of constant dissatisfaction due to the discrepancy between the idea of his own self and the self-ideal, and he is reminded of this discrepancy every minute, promising to resolve it upon reaching surrogate offered objects. These obsessive actions of modern man are: work and acquire. Practice In the modern sociological classification of social formations, the current society is positioned as information society. The development of telecommunication technologies has led to the fact that data is transmitted around the world at a speed commensurate with the speed of propagation of impulses in the nervous system of a living being, which makes it possible for the universal information space to quickly and flexibly respond to any changes in its internal and external environment. And, inheriting many characteristics of a living being, this space also tends to homeostasis, which requires the unification of its components. The technical component of this system as a whole is initially created in accordance with this requirement. However, its main bearer - man - needs further adaptation for the normal functioning of the global organism. Here, however, the question may arise: how can this global organism, consisting of many separate people, become a single whole, with its own goals, alien to each individual person? The answer to this question can be given on the basis of economic theory, moreover, both in the general sense of this phrase, and in the Freudian one. The initial striving of any living creature is to avoid irritations (13; 427 - 428). These irritations motivate a living creature to achieve a goal, which in general can be expressed as comfort. However, in a person, as you know, the goal and the motive are separated, and the intermediate goal of the activity aimed at achieving the main goal associated with the motive can in itself acquire the final value for a person (9; 465 - 472). The social distribution of labor generates a surplus of material values, which, while not being necessary for a specific person, are needed for him to obtain the values that others have that he needs. In the future, this surplus of material values is symbolically replaced by money, which often begins to seem to be the ultimate goal of activity. The very same activity, motivated by money, is in contradiction with the true need of a person: it is associated with the fulfillment of the desire of another, who often also wants to achieve a similar goal - the possession of money. Thus, this activity and this goal are alienated from man and, being the same for many people, they become a single activity and goal of a common faceless being. Freud, while describing the functioning of the mental apparatus, often resorts to economic parallels. In essence, money is similar to psychic energy in that its property is that it is formless in itself and can be directed to any object, any idea. Or, closer to Lacan's terminology, money is, like a language, an empty structure, a sliding superstructure over the layer of the signified, the code of the Other, existing before the appearance of the subject. And it is precisely this universal formlessness of money that makes it an ideal substitute for the object of any desire: the latter must still be found and realized in oneself, while money is relevant at any moment. “Zeus the banker is completely incapable of entering into a relationship of genuine and authentic exchange with anyone. The fact is that he is identified here with absolute omnipotence, with that side of the pure signifier, which is inherent in money and which decisively calls into question the existence of any possible meaningful exchange. " (J. Lacan "Formation of the unconscious" (5; 57 - 58)) The unification of the subject in the interests of the informational social organism is the entire volume of texts that form public opinion. Like a dream, with all their diversity, their essence is uniform: to fulfill the desire of the global organism to release the tension that can be created in a non-standard node - a dissenting person. What an advertisement or news report is explicitly talking about is only a superficial structure of its meaning; from the same surface structure, deep meanings emanate, which, in the end, lead to the desire for homeostasis. And, although society produces these "dreams", their subject looks. Thus, the hidden thoughts of the Other become the desires of the subject. “… There is nothing surprising in the existence of the possibility of producing desires. Desire-generating factories are, in particular, corporate advertising agencies. Advertising is an open trade in desires. This advertisement may well be reflected in a dream, the secret of which, at least since the time of Freud, is desire. " (V. A. Mazin "Rebus on the screen or the Night of Knowledge" (6; 43))

The complete absence of tension is death. However, it is not the society that dies, but the subject desires his own death. The surface structures of hallucinatory texts, at which the movements of a person's soul in search of satisfaction are directed, are fabricated in such a way that they can be connected in a necessary way with his basic deep ideas that arise even in the infantile period. And a person develops an obsessive fear that if he breaks away from this community, if his image of his own self does not meet the established standards, he will never get satisfaction. But the content of hallucinations is constantly changing, yesterday's dream is no longer relevant today, and a person constantly remains dissatisfied with himself and his objective environment and he has to constantly change himself, his body, his inner and outer world in accordance with other people's standards. And this requires more and more money and energy costs, as a result of which compulsive earnings and spending become a symptom of a modern person. The described mechanism quite accurately fits into the definition of neurosis proposed by Eric Berne: “Neurosis is a medical diagnosis of a disease arising from repeated erroneous attempts to satisfy the tension of the id in unsuitable ways, wasting energy, originating from unfinished affairs of childhood, expressing the tension of desires in a disguised, not direct a form that uses the same reaction patterns over and over again and displaces goals and objects”(1; 424). Considering the characteristic symptoms, namely: an internal desire that does not lend itself to conscious control, even if its painfulness or harmfulness is realized, usually prompting to repeat the same actions over and over again; an idea, feeling or impulse that persistently penetrates the consciousness and cannot be removed by the will of the individual, even if he understands that they are unreasonable or harmful - a modern person can be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive neurosis (1; 423, 424). Well, at least this neurosis is capable, in a form adequate for social functioning, to replace those symptoms that could themselves develop in the subject and interfere with his normal social life. You can even say that "our client" is half healthy: he is adequate at work. Alternative However, there comes a point when mental exhaustion, caused by the need to constantly strive for objects that do not bring satisfaction, and often - rather disappointment, becomes so obvious that it is no longer possible to ignore it. At this moment, a person finds himself caught between Scylla and Charybdis of two scenarios: either not to notice the obvious and continue to reproduce the obsessive symptoms until complete exhaustion occurs, or to realize the falsity of what all his psychics were directed to for a long time. and physical resources. The second case can be characterized as depreciation. But it is not only a certain object of desire that is depreciated. After all, a whole segment of life, a system of ideas, including beliefs, values, ideals, etc., are associated with it, i.e. a person becomes devalued - for himself. All this time, the libido was completely loaded into various objects, and with the disappearance of the latter, nothing remained for the I. This state can be described as a loss. I will lose a significant part of my I, in the place of which emptiness is formed. And depression arises as the possession of this emptiness. This psychic vacuum is persistently trying to capture new objects, but this is hampered by the fear of new disappointment. Thus, any object that could potentially occupy an empty space is depreciated in advance, which inevitably leads to a feeling of the universal meaninglessness of the existence of oneself and all that exists. A person finds himself in isolation alone with his emptiness. However, the positive component of this state is the awareness of previous problems associated with obsession. Therapy The main task of psychotherapy is to make it clear to the client that he has a choice. At first glance, past events cannot be changed, however, the past now no longer exists, all that remains of it is the meaning that we have here-and-now, and which can be changed here and now. It is natural for a person to perceive his life path as a plot, and hardly anyone will talk about him as a simple pile of facts. These facts are built in the story on the timeline, proceeding from a certain initial disposition of the client, who, in accordance with it, endows each such fact with some meaning and determines its place in his entire life path. Accordingly, each of them acquires a certain emotional coloring and makes a contribution to self-attitude. Therefore, the path of healing is a simultaneous movement from above and below: the search for new micro-meanings of individual facts from the past and a simultaneous change in the fundamental macro-meaning, which appears as the background of all life. The client's awareness of childhood experiences and relationships can help him build new, genetically authentic connections between infantile desires and discounted facts of his adult life. One way or another, awareness is an exit to the meta-level, when a person is no longer able to, but above it. After all, in the final analysis, any goal is ideal and, thus, unattainable, and in this sense, the main value is acquired not by achieving it, but by striving for it. In this way, discounted stages of life can be rethought as integral parts of the pursuit of Purpose.

Literature

1. Berne E. An introduction to psychiatry and psychoanalysis for the uninitiated: Per. from English A. I. Fedorov. - St. Petersburg: Talisman, 1994.-- 432 p.
2. Bodenhamer B., Hall M., NLP Practitioner: A Complete Certification Course. NLP Magic Tutorial. - SPb: "PRIME-EUROZNAK", 2003. - 727 p.
3. N. V. Zborovska Psychoanalysis and Literary Knowledge: Collected Works. - К.: "Akademvidav", 2003. - 392 p. (Alma Mater).
4. Kalina N. F. Fundamentals of psychoanalysis. Series "Educational Library" - M.: "Refl-book", K.: "Vakler", 2001. - 352 p.
5. Lacan J. The Education of the Unconscious (Seminars: Book V (1957/1958)). Per. from French / Translated by A. Chernoglazov. M.: ITDGK "Gnosis", Publishing house "Logos", 2002. - 608 p.
6. Mazin V. A. Rebus on the screen or the night of knowledge // Psychoanalysis №3 - Kiev, 2003.
7. The latest philosophical dictionary / Comp. A. A. Gritsanov. - Minsk: Ed. V. M. Skakun, 1998.-- 896 p.
8. Reznik S. Mental space: Lectures given at the Sorbonne University. Paris 1987 - 1988. Under. ed. S. G. Uvarova. Translated from English by I. M. Budanskaya. Kiev: UAP-MIGP, 2005.-- 160 p.
9. Rubinstein S. L., Fundamentals of General Psychology. - SPb.: Peter, 2003.-- 713 p.
10. Sosyur Ferdinan de, Course of foreign language studies / Per. s fr. A. Korniychuk, K. Tishchenko. - К: Osnovi, 1998, 324 p.
11. Freud Z. Basic psychological theories in psychoanalysis / Z. Freud: Per. M. V. Wolf, A. A. Spektor. - Minsk: Harvest, 2004.-- 400 p.
12. Freud Z. Beyond pleasure, Z. Freud: Per. with him. - Minsk: Harvest, 2004.-- 432.
13. Freud Z. Interpretation of dreams / Z. Freud: Per. Ya. M. Kogan; Sci. ed. per. L. V. Marishchuk. - Minsk: Harvest, 2004.-- 480 p.
14. Schopenhauer A. Aphorisms and Maxims: Works. - Moscow: ZAO Publishing House EKSMO-Press; Kharkov: Publishing house "Folio", 1998. - 736 p. (Series "Anthology of Thought").