By Elda Abrevaya
Editorial note:
This panel of the Symposium, under the collective title "Psychoanalysis and democracy in times of war and peace", consists of the following papers by Elda Abrevaya and Udo Hock, and will form the basis of their dialogue within the Symposium.
The paper by Udo Hock will appear further down this page soon.
My reflection was initially inspired by a book written by Jacques Derrrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, De quoi demain (2001), which can be translated as What about tomorrow. In fact, the title of the book comes from one of Victor Hugo’s poems, Chants du crépuscule (1835) (Songs of twilight). In his introduction Hugo remarks: ‘Everything today, in the ideas as in the things, in the society as in the individual is in twilight. What is the nature of this twilight, what will it be followed by?’ (my own translation). Victor Hugo points to both the society and the individual as two sources of reflexion. I would like to follow Victor Hugo’s path considering particularly the role of the psychoanalyst in the society. However, since the time of this invitation, things have greatly changed and the idea of twilight has turned into darkness, as the Middle East have been the theatre of wars, hence of cruelty and destruction. Both Udo Hock and me, have chosen to reflect on psychoanalysis and democracy in these times of war, each parting from our own identity, him as part of a generation born in Germany after World War II and me as a Jew living in Istanbul.
This point of departure in my discussion led me to choose as the frame of reference principally contemporary authors such as Judith Butler, Laurence Khan, Gilbert Diatkine and Michel Granek, who have realized critical studies of culture and society, studies that cannot be thought of without considering Freud’s essential essays on culture and civilization: Totem and taboo (1912-1913), ‘Thought for the times on war and death’ (1915b), Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (1921c), Civilization and its discontents (1930a) and ‘Why war?’ (1933b).
Gilbert Diatkine remarks that Freud’s reference to the notion of ‘cultural super-ego’ in Civilization and its discontents (1930a), traverses all the texts mentioned above. Freud notes: ‘The analogy between the process of civilization and the path of individual development may be extended in an important respect. It can be asserted that the community, too, evolves a super-ego under whose influence cultural development proceeds.[…] Another point of agreement between the cultural and the individual super-ego is that the former, just like the latter, sets up strict ideal demands, disobedience to which is visited with ’fear of conscience’ (Freud, 1930a, (p. 141-p.142). The demands which concern the relation between human beings constitute the domain of ethics. As Derrida and Roudinesco precise, psychoanalysis can only be rooted in the frame of a state that is governed by an ethical, legal and political system. In other words, psychoanalysis can only flourish in the heart of a democratic system to which it contributes by a developed sense of an ethical responsibility, audacity of thought and the quest of the truth.
Judith Butler questions the ethical aspect in times of war. In 2003, she had given an interview seventy-two hours after the invasion of Irak, led by the troops of United States and United Kingdom. The title of the interview was ‘Peace is resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war’ (2003). We consider that these satisfaction arise, on one hand, from the satisfaction of the destructive impulses of human beings and, on the other, from the lucrative gains that the sale of arms yields. Being capable of empathy and receptiveness to the suffering of others is part of a community ethos as well as of a democratic political culture to the extent that vulnerability and precariousness characterize human condition.
Despite the “extreme situations” that the war have created in Europe or in the Middle East, psychoanalysts have continued to work under these circumstances. Here lies a crucial aspect that has to be examined: What makes possible for psychoanalysis to resist to these extreme situations and transform the attacks made against the human mind and life? A major interrogation posed by the argument becomes our interrogation: “Can psychoanalysis thrive in totalitarian regimes or does it require a democratic political environment in order to sustain itself and proliferate?” It is evident that the freedom of thought and freedom of expression, which are like the air that the psychoanalyst breathes, require a democratic system. It is impossible for psychoanalysis to exist in totalitarian regimes, such as has been during the nazi regime or the military dictatorships in Latin America. In the case of the dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, psychoanalysts had to emigrate to other countries in Latin America or in Europe.
We will begin with the changes that the nazi regime have brought about with respect to psychoanalysis and we will refer to Laurence Kahn’s important book What nazism did to psychoanalysis (2022). The nazism provoked not only the exile of a great number of psychoanalysts to England, the United States and Latin America but also had as its inevitable consequence the ‘deep modification of the intellectual horizon in which this theory and its practice had been shaped’ (my own translation) (Kahn, 2018, p. 10). A few years before emigrating to London, Freud expresses in his correspondence with Jones in 1933 that under the black clouds of the rise of the nazism, he felt “isolated and defeated” and without being able to realize any significant activity. However, in Great Britain psychoanalysis could flourish thanks to the contributions of Winnicott and Bion and of immigrants such as Melanie Klein, Hanna Segal, Herbert Rosenfeld, Ester Bick and others. Or, this was not the case in the United States. Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein and other analysts who emigrated to this country gave a different theoretical orientation to Freudian metapsychology and created the Ego Psychology. The latter aimed at liberating the ego, notes Laurence Khan, from the tyranny of the drives, particularly from that of the destructive drives. What deeply preoccupied Hartmann was the fact that the ego could adapt to reality in ‘regressive’ forms, dominated by affects and judgements at the service of destruction.
In 1932, on behalf of the League of Nations, Einstein invites Freud for an exchange of views on the question “Why war?”, looking for an answer to the urgent question of freeing mankind from the possibility of war. Einstein, with great wisdom, considers that the hatred and destruction that in normal times exist in a latent state, can be stirred and become explosive. Freud is astonished by the lucidity with which Einstein poses the existence of the aggressive impulses in the human beings and is convinced that there is no way of getting entirely rid of them. The only solution to the problem would lie in Eros, that is the sexual drive, which assures the possibility to create emotional ties by means of identification and to sublimate. However, even this solution does not guarantee that the progress of civilization will be definitive.
In the foreword of his book Le surmoi culturel (2023) (The cultural super-ego), Gilbert Diatkine describes the regressive forms that civilization can take in certain periods of history, particularly when the masses identify with a leader. Gilbert Diatkine (2023), leaning on Freud’s papers on narcissism, mourning and melancholia and group psychology, precises that each time that the masses are organized through identification with a leader or an idea, its members are united to each other by narcissistic love. When objectal libido regresses into narcissistic libido as in the case of identification, the destructive drives are unbinded from the sexual drives and directed against the external world in the form of destructivity. Diatkine poses two principal questions:
- How is that every progress of civilization that is reached after a period of barbarism, cannot be definitive?
- How is it that despite the regular returns of barbarism, we can still react to them as if they occurred for the first time?
How we can still have faith and optimism in the forces of civilization and Eros after having experienced or witnessed such barbarian times? This is an enigmatic question and merits reflexion on our part. Diatkine enumerates the times when the European have been shocked with the collective atrocities that have taken place in the heart of the continent. During the war of Algeria (1954-1962), the French army had used torture against the Algerians, just like the way the Gestapo had tortured the French people under Occupation. Diatkine notes how the young people in Yugoslavia, who were cultivated and pacifists, had become torturers in a question of months. The Croatians and the Serbs, who were sister nations, had fought each other with a total barbarism.
Psychoanalysis in extreme situations
However, we know that despite the ‘extreme situations’ created by the war in Ukraine or in the Middle East, psychoanalysts struggle to work with their patients. A remarkable paper written by Marie-Thérèse Badawi “Being, thinking, creating: When war attacks the setting and the transference counter-attacks” (2011) accounts for the way psychoanalysts have worked and continue to work in Lebanon. She poses crucial questions with respect to the setting. ‘How can the unchanging nature of the setting can be protected when it is constantly under attack? What happens when both analyst and analysand are caught up in the same traumatic situation?’ (Badawi, 2011, p. 402). She discusses the vignettes of three patients. I will take that of Emile. While in the session the analyst’s attention had been drawn to the noise of the bombs coming closer, Emile had continued to be absorbed by his fantasy world. The analyst had found herself in a growing state of apprehension and feared for her patient, for herself and for her family. Emile seemed to deny the overwhelming external reality and had taken refuge in his idealizing transference of an omnipotent analyst. The analyst had considered that he was not yet ready to face the external reality. So, she had settled him in her waiting room, giving him some water and sandwiches, a radio to keep up with the news and a mattress so that he could spend the night there. It was only the following day that Emile could leave. Badawi reminds us something essential as to the role of the psychoanalyst in these critical moments. What counts in those moments is not only empathy but particularly the possibility to be present and think as a psychoanalyst.
In Barbarism, pain and myth (2025), Michel Granek poses the problems faced by the analyst in similar terms to those considered by Badawi. He remarks how in Israel the war has created too much reality, which had come to represent an inhuman condition. In 1991 during the Gulf war, under the alert of Scud missiles, both the patient and the analyst had to wear their gas masks and take refuge in a leaded room. Various possibilites of work had arisen: analyst and patient continued to work with their gas mask or they interrupted the session or changed the hours of the sessions. In all these situations, a collapse of the therapeutic space was produced. However, the collusion of both realities was transitory and the therapeutic work could be re-established and consisted in reviving psychic reality, thus differentiating between these two realities.
We would like to conclude our work by referring to Badawi’s major interrogation: ‘How faced with the destruction which threatens everything, can a way be found for a desire to live and love?’ (Badawi, 2011, p. 406). This idea finds echo in Han Kang, who in her Nobel prize lecture, expresses that her writing has been an endeavour to find “an impossible way through the empty space between these two precipices of human horror and human dignity”.
References
Badawi, M. T. (2011). Being, thinking, creating: When war attacks the setting and the transference counter-attacks. International journal of psychoanalysis, 92 (3): 401-409.
Derrida, J. & Roudinesco, E. (2001). De quoi demain…Dialogue. Paris: Fayard.
Diatkine, G. (2003). Le surmoi culturel. Aux sources de la violence collective. Paris: Fario.
Freud, S. (1921c). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. SE: 18, 67-143.
Freud, S. (1930a). Civilization and its discontents. SE:21, 59-145.
Einstein, A. & Freud, S. (1933b) Why war? SE: 22, 197-215.
Kahn, L. (2018). Ce que le nazisme a fait à la psychanalyse. Paris: PUF.