Bolshevik Revolution, Stalinism, and Freud: Key Takeaways

The lecture delves into the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Stalin, and then transitions to an in-depth exploration of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories, contrasting them with Marxist thought.

The Aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Rise of Stalin

The Bolshevik Revolution led to a brutal civil war, culminating in the formation of the Soviet Union. In 1924, Lenin died prematurely from a stroke, a moment historians have extensively debated regarding its contingent impact. This event triggered a power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, which Stalin ultimately won. Trotsky was relentlessly pursued, eventually assassinated in Mexico by one of Stalin's agents. This episode is fictionalized in the film "Frida," which features Frida Kahlo, one of Trotsky's last lovers.

A key ideological divergence between Trotsky and Stalin concerned the concept of international workers' revolution. Lenin had wagered on a global uprising of workers to overthrow the bourgeoisie, believing that any provisional arrangements, such as those with Germany, would be irrelevant. Stalin, however, opportunistically declared "socialism in one country" when the worldwide revolution failed to materialize. This meant that communism could be built within the Soviet Union even without a global workers' movement. Trotsky, conversely, advocated for "permanent revolution," maintaining a classical Marxist position.

The lecture highlights how this period led to the emergence of a totalitarian state, a form of governance previously unknown. One explanation for this development, though causality in history is always speculative, is the "rushing of history." The Bolsheviks, like the French revolutionaries before them, faced the challenge of creating a new world with individuals "still withered by the cross of despotism," as Robespierre described it. This raises the fundamental question of whether people can be transformed or re-engineered, or if a new generation is required to truly embrace a new societal vision, akin to the biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites for 40 years until the generation with a "slave mentality" died out.

The Nature of Totalitarianism

The totalitarian state that emerged under Stalinism is characterized by:

• A draconian ideology claiming absolute truth.
• A messianic movement.
• Institutions of terror.
• Monopolies over communications and armed forces.
• An attempt at a panopticon state, where the state observes everyone, everywhere.
• The effacement of the distinction between public and private realms.

The Bolsheviks took the Enlightenment idea of human and social perfectibility literally, believing they could control, reshape, and perfect the world through social engineering. They saw writers and intellectuals as "engineers of human souls," tasked with creating a "new man." This ambition prompts a deeper inquiry into the nature of humanity and subjectivity. The Bolshevik goal was for individuals to identify so completely with the "iron laws of history" that there would be no distinction between the individual "I" and the collective "we," echoing Hegel's concept of "the I that is a we, and the we that is an I." Any subjective element not aligned with the objective collective was to be purged. This concept is famously explored in Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel "We," which inspired Orwell's "1984," where the phrase "We comes from God, I comes from the devil" encapsulates the suppression of individuality.

Introduction to Freud and the Unconscious

The lecture then shifts to Sigmund Freud, contrasting his focus on the individual "I" with the Bolshevik emphasis on the collective "we." Freud, a theorist of modernity like Marx, sought to understand why people are unhappy in the modern world.

Born in 1856 in the Habsburg Empire to an assimilated Jewish family, Freud grew up an atheist but was profoundly shaped by his Jewish identity in Vienna, a city becoming a hub for Jewish emancipation. Initially drawn to literature and big philosophical questions, he studied medicine and was absorbed by physiology and neurology. He broke from the prevailing positivism of his time by asserting that the mind could cause its own illnesses, and that ideas, not just physical forces, could lead to sickness.

Freud's early work involved experimenting with hypnosis and cocaine, and he focused on "hysteria," an illness then exclusively associated with women and believed to stem from uterine malfunction. Freud challenged this, proposing that mental stimuli could cause mental illness. His breakthrough was the idea that hysteria resulted from repressed childhood trauma, often sexual molestation or seduction, which returned as neurotic symptoms. He later revised this, suggesting that imagined or fantasized traumatic experiences could also cause illness, further distancing his theories from empirical, tangible events and emphasizing the purely thought-based nature of mental illness. This led to "psychologism," where an individual's psychic life is understood on its own terms, not merely as a derivative of biological or chemical processes.

Freud posited that neurotic symptoms are often substitutes for sexual satisfaction, and that sexual repression is a fundamental cause of unhappiness. The treatment he developed, psychoanalysis, began with "Anna O." and involved purely talking to address psychic disorders. He later analyzed dreams, developing a model for psychoanalytic dream interpretation. The term "psychoanalysis" was first used in 1896, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was convened in 1908. His "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" (1917) popularized his ideas. Freud remained in Vienna until the Anschluss in 1938, then moved to London, where he died in 1939.

Key Concepts of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a procedure for treating neurotic patients by coaxing the unconscious to reveal itself. Key concepts include:

• Repression and the Unconscious: For Freud, everything important happens in the unconscious. Neurosis and psychosis result from repressed desires manifesting in debilitating ways. Since everyone experiences repression, everyone is, to some degree, neurotic.
• The Reality of the Unconscious: Freud defended the concept of the unconscious against skepticism, arguing that unconscious mental processes represent a decisive step towards a new understanding of the world and science.
• Childhood Sexuality: Freud controversially claimed that sexuality begins in childhood, defining "sexual" broadly to include desires beyond genital intercourse. Repressing childhood sexuality contributes to trauma.
• Oedipus Complex: This universal motif describes a child's psychosexual development where love shifts from the breast to the mother, leading to desire for the mother and resentment (even secret murderous wishes) towards the father. These desires are quickly repressed into the unconscious.
• The Unconscious as a "Dark Psychic Closet": Disturbing thoughts and desires are shoved into this closet, accumulating over a lifetime. Nothing truly disappears; repressed desires always return, often in disguised forms.

Freud's Structural Model of the Self

Freud proposed a structural model of the self with two vertical layers and three horizontal parts:

• Vertical Layers:
  • Unconscious: The more important, causal, and formative part, submerged beneath awareness.
  • Conscious: The top layer, representing awareness.
• Horizontal Parts (Tripartite Model):
  • Id (das Es - "the it"): Pure libido, representing primal desires. It consists of two hardwired drives:
    • Eros: The life drive (lust, sex, pleasure).
    • Thanatos: The death drive (aggression, killing, anger).
  • Super-ego (das Über-Ich - "the over-I"): Conscience, internalized societal norms, constantly generating guilt and telling the individual what is wrong.
  • Ego (das Ich - "the I"): The self, which must constantly negotiate between the conflicting demands of the id and the super-ego. This perpetual conflict explains why individuals are often miserable.

This model suggests a closed energy system where psychic energy is conserved and moves between different behaviors. Repressed desires don't vanish but return in various forms, a phenomenon known as the "return of the repressed." Thwarted aggression, for instance, can turn inward.

Psychoanalysis as a Practice

Psychoanalysis involves talking to an analyst to coax the unconscious into revealing itself, alleviating symptoms. It requires significant time and financial investment, with patients typically engaging in multiple sessions per week, often lying on a couch and free associating. The process is private, with no third-party observers, emphasizing the unique relationship between analyst and analysand.

Freud's Theory of Society

Freud extended his individual psychology to a theory of society:

• Religion as an Infantile Illusion: Freud, an atheist, viewed religion as a reactionary illusion stemming from an infantile desire for an omnipotent father figure. When individuals realize their earthly fathers are not all-powerful, they project this desire onto God.
• Civilization and Unhappiness: Freud, like some Enlightenment thinkers, believed civilization inherently makes us unhappy. It demands the repression of both Eros (sexual desires) and Thanatos (aggressive instincts) to enable communal living. Children learn to exchange pleasure for social respectability.
• The Cost of Society: While civilization offers security by curbing violence and aggression, it comes at a psychic cost. The constant effort to repress primal desires drains psychic energy that could otherwise be used for pleasure. Aggression, instead of being directed outwards, is often turned inwards.
• Happiness vs. Security: For Freud, society involves exchanging happiness (the pleasure principle) for security (the reality principle). Civilization is constantly being created anew as each individual sacrifices instinctual satisfaction for the community's benefit.

Comparison with Marxism and Concluding Thoughts

Freud shares several similarities with Marxism:

• Grandiose Scope: Both offer comprehensive theories of human existence.
• Base and Superstructure Analogy: The unconscious/conscious relationship in Freud parallels Marx's base/superstructure.
• Determinism: Both posit underlying factors that determine human behavior (repression for Freud, class struggle for Marx).
• Critique of Religion: Both view religion as an illusion (opiate of the masses for Marx, infantile illusion for Freud).

However, key differences exist:

• Materialism vs. Anti-materialism: Marx is a materialist; Freud is an anti-materialist.
• Central Concept: For Marx, property is central; for Freud, sexuality is.
• Guilt vs. Power: Guilt is central for Freud, akin to how power is central for Foucault.
• Thanatos: Freud argues Marxists fail to account for Thanatos (the death drive), believing that changing social conditions will eliminate aggression. Freud asserts aggression is hardwired and predates capitalism. Marxists, in turn, might view psychoanalysis as a bourgeois attempt to prevent revolution.

In conclusion, Freud believed that everything important happens in the unconscious, and the self is never fully transparent or identical to itself. Self-knowledge is inherently limited because fundamental aspects of our being are hidden. Psychoanalysis, as a theory of modernity, suggests that once something enters the self, it cannot be removed. It highlights a perpetual tension between longing for authority and desiring to undermine it. Freud's work is a theory of life after the "death of God," where humans reject divine authority but still seek solace. It is a theory of complexity and the impossibility of non-contradiction, implying that unlike in Marxism, there is no ultimate "way out" or "happily ever after." Psychoanalysis can alleviate symptoms, but the self remains in conflict with itself, and society remains in conflict with individual happiness. The lecture ends with a provocative thought: the appeal of figures like Donald Trump might stem from offering a "liberation from repression," allowing the expression of uninhibited libido, even at the cost of civilization.