Why Do Ideologies Exist?: The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Culture
Date posted: June 28, 2011 | by Richard Koenigsberg | Comments
(Library of Social Science)
Regarding the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt said, “anti-Semitism explains everything—and therefore nothing.” To understand the Holocaust it is necessary to explain anti-Semitism. In Hitler’s Ideology, I seek to illuminate the psychological meaning of Nazi anti-Semitism: the unconscious fantasies that sustained and supported the cultural form. How may we account for the passion that this ideology evoked? Through analysis of images and metaphors contained within Hitler’s writings and speeches, I demonstrate that Hitler’s ideology revolved around a fantasy about Germany as an actual body—containing Jewish microorganisms that had to be removed if the nation was to survive. This study, I hope, lays the foundation for a psychoanalytic approach to the study of ideology, culture and history.
In Hitler’s Ideology, I present a method for uncovering the “deep structure” of ideologies and cultural belief systems. By identifying recurring images and metaphors contained in Hitler’s rhetoric, I show how fantasies and other elements of psychic life are projected into ideologies and cultural forms. “The Jew”, for example, was a central component of Hitler’s ideology, described typically as a disease, force of disintegration and parasite within the body of the people. Recurring images and metaphors within Hitler’s writings and speeches allow one to perceive the core fantasies that structured Hitler’s vision of reality and energized historical action.
The central fantasy contained within Hitler’s ideology may be summarized as follows:
- The nation is a living organism consisting of the German people, who constitute the substance or “flesh and blood” of this organism.
- This essentially healthy, sound body politic is being attacked by a virulent internal force working toward its destruction.
- The source of the destructive force within the national body is “the Jew” or “the Jewish Bolshevik.”
- Insofar as the purpose of politics is to “maintain the body of the people,” any action is justifiable if it serves to eliminate the force working to destroy Germany.
The objective of Nazism was to take whatever actions necessary to assure that Germany would survive. Hitler’s ideology revolved around “saving Germany from death.” The Nazis ruthlessly committed themselves to destroying the pathogens whose continued presence within the body politic, Hitler believed, would lead to the nation’s demise.
According to Hitler’s ideological fantasy, each individual German constituted a cell—forming a gigantic “national organism.” The force of disintegration within Germany, Hitler believed, caused the cellular structure of the nation to fall apart. Hitler devoted his existence to persuading the German people to come together so as to constitute a unified, cohesive body. If the people could “hold together like a single block of steel,” then the national body would not succumb to the force of destruction.
II. IDEOLOGY AND FANTASY
Hitler believed in his ideology. His hysteria and passionate rhetoric reflected the depth of his attachment to his own ideas. Hitler was able to persuade millions of others to become passionate about the ideas that moved him. He convinced many Germans that their nation was under attack, whipping his people into a fury, prevailing upon them to rise up to undertake a “life or death struggle” to save the nation.
People devalue the power of Hitler’s ideas, claiming they are irrational, inconsistent, devoid of intellectual content, etc. They underestimate the impact of Hitler’s ideology because they are under the spell of the fantasy of “rationality.” Ideas do not have to be true to be believed. It is simply necessary that they evoke an emotional response from the people to whom they are conveyed.
Politicians articulate their own emotions and fantasies through the vehicle of ideas that they put forth upon the public stage. If a politician is to be successful, the ideas he conveys must resonate with the populace. The leader’s words must evoke emotions and fantasies within his audience that are not unlike the emotions and fantasies that his words evoke within himself. What was it Hitler said that so excited the German people? What emotions and fantasies were conveyed by the words he spoke? How was it possible for Hitler to galvanize so many people to perform such radical acts?
Metaphors and images within the rhetoric of political leaders contain, evoke and bring forth latent fantasies into reality. An ideology constitutes a modus operandi allowing unconscious fantasies to be activated and externalized into the world. Ideologies “capture” or harness energy contained within latent desires or fantasies, making this energy available for concerted, societal action.
III. WHAT DO IDEOLOGIES DO?
In “The Jewish Parasite,” Alexander Bein notes that in Nazi ideology words “assume a definite biological aspect.” The original character of the word “parasite” for example—as a mere simile and comparison—gradually was effaced and replaced by parasite “in its actual meaning as a biological organism.”
The rise of Nazism is an example of the “social construction of reality.” Hitler described Jews as parasites, bacteria and viruses. Nazi ideology was constructed on the fantasy of Germany as a “living organism” containing the Jew as a disease that threatened to kill the nation. Bein observes that the language inherent in the images and similes used to describe the Jew gained such power over the German people so as to make “image and reality one.” Genocide was undertaken as a form of immunology: to kill off pathogenic cells in order to save the national organism.
Nazi ideology presented Jews as corroding and poisonous parasites everywhere infesting and striving to “destroy the body of the German people as a whole and each individual German with a demonic power, driven by their law of existence as parasites, bacilli and vermin.” This depiction of the Jew, Bein says, “paralyzed to a large extent any internal resistance on the part of the masses.” The metaphor of the Jews as “bacilli not to be negotiated with but to be exterminated” could, in the atmosphere of bio-mythology, “become a horrible reality.”
What does it mean to say that Germany was a “body containing Jewish bacteria”? This metaphor is manifest content containing latent meaning. Analysis of recurring images within a leader’s rhetoric allows one to uncover the unconscious fantasies that are the source of the ideology. To seek to discover the meaning of an ideology is to attempt to understand why it exists.
Social theory does not often address the reasons why certain ideologies exist. People speak of “dominant discourses.” But the question is: why do specific discourses become dominant? To answer this question, I suggest a psychological approach. What does this particular ideology do for the people who embrace it? What role does the ideology play in the psychic life of its adherents?
Culture is not a domain separate from human beings. Ideologies exist to the extent that people produce, espouse and perpetuate them. Ideologies are created by human beings for human beings. Ideologies perform psychic work, allowing people to encounter, work through and attempt to master fundamental desires, fantasies, conflicts and existential dilemmas.
To comprehend the rise of Hitler, for example, one must uncover the sources Nazism’s appeal. Why did millions of Germans become hysterical when Hitler spoke? Why were men like Goebbels and Himmler mesmerized by Hitler’s words? Hitler’s ideas touched a deep chord. His ideology drew forth and crystallized latent desires and fantasies, allowing them to manifest as social reality.
IV. THE GERMAN BODY POLITIC AND THE DENIAL OF DEATH
Hitler’s ideology was a radical form of nationalism revolving around the fantasy of the German body politic in a state of disintegration. Insofar as Hitler identified so profoundly with his nation, he experienced Germany’s disintegration as his own. Hitler was unable to separate political perceptions from perception of his inner state of being. He articulated inner states of being through his ideology.
What is this ideology of nationalism, still so powerful that we barely recognize it as or call it an ideology? A line in America the Beautiful: “Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain!” Nationalism revolves around the quest for narcissistic omnipotence. The ego of the nationalist seeks to expand by imagining that it is fused with a vast geographical territory: the entire “space” of national life.
The ideology of nationalism suggests that the entirety of one’s country—its history, people and accomplishments—exist within the self. Nationalism implies the absence of a boundary between self and country. According to this ideology, self and nation are inextricably bound. To be a “man without a country” seems inconceivable.
However, if the ego’s wish for narcissistic expansion is projected into the idea of one’s nation, so is the ego’s vulnerability and tendency toward fragmentation. Hitler externalized anxiety into the idea of Germany and believed his nation was in danger of disintegrating. He experienced the idea of death (his own death) as a perception that Germany—the body politic with which he identified his own body—was falling apart.
Contemporary theorists focus on how language shapes thought; how discourse structures the body. However, language and discourse also are vehicles through which mind and body are externalized. Each of us possesses a force of disintegration operating within (what Freud called the death instinct). Hitler experienced and articulated the idea of death in the form of a belief that his nation was disintegrating. The Nazi project was to defeat Germany’s force of disintegration—to overcome death by creating a body politic that could live forever.
One way human beings deal with the issue of mortality is through the creation of nations or “omnipotent bodies politic”: entities that seem to exist in a dimension separate from organic existence. We project the idea of our small, frail bodies into the idea of these imaginary, omnipotent bodies and imagine that we will “live on” as if contained within them.
Hitler promoted an ideology revolving around the denial of death. At the core of Nazism was Hitler’s fantasy that if the bodies of individual Germans could fuse to create a single body politic, then the nation would never die. If the German people were united (massed together as cells of an organism) to create one, indestructible body, then the country could live forever. In this typical nationalist fantasy, the nation or body politic is an entity that exists above and beyond the lives or bodies of particular individuals.
In spite of his effort to embrace Germany as “vesture for the eternal” (Fichte), Hitler’s sense of death continued to return in the form of a perception that the national body was in the process of disintegrating or decomposing. Hitler projected the idea of death into the idea of the Jew. The German body politic could become immortal if not for the Jewish principle of death operating within it.
The fundamental purpose of Nazi ideology was to split off the idea of death and locate it in a symbolic representation, the Jew. Hitler and the Nazis promoted the ideology of anti-Semitism in the struggle to which they committed themselves against death. Having projected into the Jew the idea that bodies become diseased and die, this struggle took the form of an effort to “kill off” the symbolic object into which the idea of death had been projected.
V. THE PSYCHIC FUNCTION OF IDEOLOGY
Recent social theory tends to view thought and motivation as originating in structures outside the self. Indeed, some insist that mind and self are nothing but the “discourses that push and pull us.” I pose questions about the sources and meanings of ideologies. Who has created ideologies, and why do they exist? Why have particular discourses been “selected out” (from among the multitude of ideas that people put forth) to become elements of culture? Why do certain ideologies evoke such passion?
In order to answer these questions, we need to articulate the meaning of culturally constituted ideas; to delineate the psychic work these ideas perform for the people who embrace them. In asking why ideologies exist, one seeks to uncover the symbolic meaning of cultural belief systems. I hypothesize that ideologies or discourses are embraced and perpetuated (become elements of culture) to the extent that they perform psychic functions for human beings.
Social theory suggests that what is “out there” in culture (the “symbolic order”) constitutes an independent, autonomous domain that imposes itself on human beings, but is separate from us. This perspective, to me, seems delusional. Who creates language and discourse? Who other than human beings are responsible for the nature and shape of the entire panoply of ideas, material objects and social arrangements that we call culture?
Examine cultural forms such as symphonies, light bulbs and air conditioners, and it is not difficult to acknowledge that human beings are the source: to say that these inventions represent a response to our desires and fantasies. These cultural artifacts came into being because they fulfilled human needs; because some human beings wanted symphonies, light bulbs and air conditioners to exist.
I theorize that war and genocide—like symphonies, light bulbs and air conditioners—exist because they represent the fulfillment of psychological needs. It is difficult for people to say that cultural inventions such as war and genocide exist because they provide psychological gratification. We shy away from the idea that ideologies that generate war and genocide articulate human desires and fantasies. We prefer to imagine that war and genocide come from a place outside the self.
Hitler’s ideology constituted a modus operandi for himself and the German people, bringing forth latent fantasies and desires onto the stage of social reality. Hitler created “history” to the extent that he harnessed these latent desires and fantasies, focusing them through the lens of his ideology. His rhetoric—the metaphors and images contained within his speeches—functioned to evoke the shared fantasies of the German people.
I do believe that the individual human being constitutes a reality sui generis. But I do not believe it is “delusional” to believe that culture and/or social structure are not realities sui generis also. (There is some disagreement as to whether we can really separate social “structure” from cultural “structure.”) It is not necessarily delusional to believe that “culture” represents a reality sui generis just as the “semiotic self” (Wiley 1994; Bakker 2011) represents a reality sui generis.
To deny that the social domain represents a “reality” outside of us is a claim that is very, very hard to defend. As I perceive it, claiming that it is delusional to believe that culture and/or social structure can have an important impact on individuals can be read as denying that the disciplines of anthropology and sociology have any relevance whatsoever to the study of power and ideology. It may be true that individuals contribute to language and discourse, but it is also true that language (in the sense of de Saussure) has a “structure” that is beyond any one individual. Otherwise each of us would have a private language and we would not be able to communicate at all in, say, Arabic or Mandarin. The central ideas concerning Hitler’s ideology are very important. Why add such a controversial and largely indefensible psychological reductionism?
I did not say that social reality does not constitute a reality outside of us.
Nor do I deny the significance of the disciplines of anthropology or sociology (I invented the term “psychoanalytic sociology” and gave a plenary talk for the SOCIETY FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY).
What I say in my essay is that it is delusional to believe that the symbolic order CONSTITUTES AN INDEPENDENT, AUTONOMOUS REALM THAT IS SEPARATE FROM HUMAN BEINGS.
Peter Berger (with whom I studied) wrote the following in THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY: “Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly superhuman terms. Reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world. The objectivity of the social world means that it confronts man as something outside of himself. The decisive question is whether he still retains the awareness that, however, objectivated, the social world was made by men—and, therefore, can be remade by
them.”
This is one of the first statements of the social construction of reality and Berger was (is) a sociologist who understood the power of the “world taken for granted:” the social world into which we are born. However, he also understood that–however powerful the “objective” social reality–human beings have been and are the creators of this reality.
This is an understanding that has been forgotten in contemporary social theory. Of course, what I’m saying seems controversial: because it contradicts the stance (the hegemonic discourse) that dominates much current thought.
Of course, I’m familiar (50 years as a social scientist) of theories that emphasize language, discourse, the symbolic order, etc.: These somewhat more sophisticated presentations of the idea of “cultural and historical determinism” have been around for a long time.
I’m suggesting that–in spite of the discourse that dominates the academic world–this position is delusion, or if you want to say it more politely: WRONG.
My research demonstrates how ideological positions CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE PSYCHE. Of course, anti-Semitism was a cultural form in Germany. However, the only reason Hitler embraced/had an interest in it was because the ideology CONTAINED SOMETHING WITHIN IT THAT WAS PSYCHOLOGICALLY GRATIFYING TO HIM.
Hannah Arendt explained, “ANTI-SEMITISM EXPLAINS EVERYTHING–and therefore explains nothing” (recall the concept of tautology).
I remember how the hippies emerged out of nowhere in the Sixties. Drugs were a big part of this new culture. What a fantastic thing: this strange form of being and behavior that arose in the Sixties.
Then the textbooks started to be written. Why did the hippies take drugs? The sociological texts had an answer: BECAUSE OF THE HIPPIE SUBCULTURE. Are you satisfied with this as an “explanation?”
The preceding comment seems directly on point, but I would take the critique a bit further. It is not that Koenigsberg is wrong — what he says is entirely convincing, as far as it goes. However, he reacts so strongly against “external” perspectives that he misunderstands the epistemological issue and opens himself up to the charge of one-sidedness. The point is to CONNECT the “psychogenic” and “sociogenic” sources of ideology, not to advance one perspective at the expense of the other.
For example, Koenigsberg says, “Hitler’s ideology was a radical form of nationalism revolving around the fantasy of the German body politic in a state of disintegration.” Extreme nationalism, yes — but, fantasies aside, the German body politic WAS unquestionably in a state of distintegration. The reasons for this are well explored by theorists of the Frankfurt School and others. If one does not understand that this was a reality, not just a fantasy, one misses the whole issue of interaction between psychic perceptions and social pathologies. It’s especially important to focus on this nexus now, when American political society (among others) is also in a state of disintegration, although at an early phase of the process than Nazi Germany.
Richard Rubenstein suggests that the German body politic “WAS unquestionably in a state of disintegration” (that this was not simply Hitler’s fantasy or perception). And that American society today is at an “early phase of the process”–also in a state of disintegration. He states that it is important to study the “whole issue of interaction between psychic perceptions and social pathologies.”
My second book–written over thirty years ago–is entitled THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF RACISM, REVOLUTION AND NATIONALISM, recently republished as “THE NATION: A Study in Ideology and Fantasy.” See:
http://nationshavetherighttokill.com/bookshelf/the_nation.html
On page four, I cite Petrarch, writing in 1344: “My Italy, though words do not avail to heal the mortal wounds that in your lovely body I see so dense, I wish at least to let my signing sounds with Arno and Tiber wall.”
In forty years of studying nationalists and their ideologies, I have NEVER COME ACROSS A SINGLE LEADER WHO DOES NOT IMAGINE THAT THEIR COUNTRY IS DISEASED, SICK, FALLING APART, OR DISINTEGRATING. This is part-and-parcel of the ideology of nationalism. It does not depend on a particular historical situation.
Of course, there are different DEGREES of chaos or disorder within a nation.
However, I suggest that the IDEA OF NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION IS PART AND PARCEL OF THE IDEOLOGY OF NATIONALISM. In short, the perception of national disintegration is relatively independent of “real conditions in the external world.”
Indeed, the concept of the “enemy”–the essence of nationalism–is bound to the perception of the possibility of national disintegration or destruction. The nationalist believes that there is some ENEMY THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISINTEGRATION (or impending destruction) of one’s nation. Please tell me a time in history when a nation DID NOT believe it was in crisis: in danger of being destroyed by an enemy?
This could have been during the First World War for the United States (the German danger), second World War (danger of Hitler), Cold War (danger of communism, that generated wars in Korea and Vietnam), or currently (danger of terrorism). The time that the United States didn’t seem to have a mortal enemy was the 1990s. And then it REALLY SEEMED THE NATION WAS FOLLOWING APART (no enemy to attack, so we located internal enemies).
Identification of an enemy ameliorates the feeling of disintegration: because then one can ATTACK THE ENEMY AS THE SOURCE OF DISINTEGRATION.
The main issue is the notion that nations are “real things.” It is hopeless for me to disabuse people of this idea: nearly everyone is tied into the fantasy of the reality of “the nation” (much as people 400 years ago believed in God).
However, if one thinks about it, it’s clear that “the nation” is a MENTAL REPRESENTATION. There is no entity out there that can be identified as “the Nation”–because the nation is a construct or word. Of course, there is a religious fetish for nearly everyone, so to say that the nation is a construct rather than an actuality is sacra-religious.
The nation symbolizes an omnipotent part of the self: the nation is a projection of the human psyche (the fantasy of immortality).
The other part of this psychic complex is that we know that there is NO SUCH THING AS OMNIPOTENCE–nothing that can save us from death. OUR FANTASY OF OMNIPOTENCE OR IMMORTALITY IS ALWAYS IN THE PROCESS OF DISINTEGRATING.
This is why WARS are a permanent feature of the human condition. Not because warfare has any “survival value” (precisely the opposite, death in warfare, e. g., World Wars I and II means that men CANNOT REPRODUCE).
Wars are a permanent feature of the human condition because the IDEA OF THE OMNIPOTENCE OR IMMORTALITY OF ONE’S NATION IS ALWAYS IN DOUBT. If there are “nations,” then there have to be enemies (internal or external) that are imagined to be CAUSING THE NATION TO DISINTEGRATE.
Of course, if one limits oneself to a few historical example (Germany during the Wiemar Republic or the United States today), it APPEARS that “disintegration” refers to a real condition. However, EVERY NATIONALISTIC LEADER I’VE STUDIED BELIEVES THAT THE NATION IS FALLING APART, SICK, DISEASED, DISINTEGRATING–REQUIRING DESPERATE ACTIONS.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kaiser in Germany before the First World War, Turkish leaders during the First World War (leading to the Armenian genocide)–believed that the nation was in danger of disintegrating: requiring DESPERATE EFFORTS. GENOCIDAL KILLING is a common methodology for PREVENTING THE NATION FROM DISINTEGRATING. Not only Hitler, but Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., had this PERCEPTION OF NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION.
National leaders nearly ALWAYS believe that their country is disintegrating, or in danger of disintegrating. One can say this is TRUE (based on external reality). Or one can that this is part of a PSYCHOLOGICAL/IDEOLOGICAL COMPLEX REVOLVING AROUND THE NATION AS A FANTASY OBJECT–ALWAYS IN A STATE OF DISINTEGRATION.
Can one “imagine there’s no country?” Only if one accepts loss forever (N. O. Brown) can one transcend the perception that one’s nation is disintegrating.
As long as one is attached to the idea of a nation, one will feel it is falling apart–because the idea of omnipotence or immortality will always be in the process of falling apart.
I agree with the above comments. In addition, two more points. First, I’m surprised there is no mention of the work of Robert Jay Lifton, who emphasized the disease metaphor you focus on in his study of Concentration Camp guards and other areas.
Second, two aspects of wider German culture fed into the acceptance of HItler’s ideology, namely the general emphasis on cleanliness and hygiene, and also the intense devotion to rules and authority. None of this was universal in Germany, but it was quite widespread. Further reasons for following this were the results of the treatment Germany received as the “loser” of WWI, and the general worldwide Depression, which hit Germany quite hard. All of this was deeply social, and therefore individuals who might never have entertained a wish for war or genocide on their own, or from their internal psychic constitution, could accept it as part of their attempt to feel part of a larger and frightened whole.
Michael,
Thanks for writing. HITLER’S IDEOLOGY (not a new book)came out before THE NAZI DOCTORS. Met Robert Lifton at a conference a few years ago, and he acknowledged that his research grew out of mine.
Been researching this for 40 years, so I can’t summarize what I know here.
I’m grateful for your own writings on the ATTENTION ECONOMY. A lot of what I’m trying to do in my Newsletter grew out of my reading your early writings (that of course have morphed into so much more and proven so accurate). See directly below the introduction to my website.
On the issue of the relationship between desire and phantasy, on the one hand, and society or culture, on the other: I’d be grateful, Michael, if you give serious consideration to the following question (don’t answer too quickly):
WHAT CAME FIRST (in the case of the INTERNET OR WORLD-WIDE WEB): The TECHNOLOGY or the QUEST TO FULFILL OF THE DESIRE FOR ATTENTION (that the web facilitates).
Of course, most people would say the technology (culture) came first.
However, couldn’t it work the other way around: that the desire for attention (desire to be liberated from the mass-media, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not”) came first and that the Internet/Web evolved as a RESPONSE TO THIS DESIRE?
This illustrates my fundamental theory on psychoanalysis of culture: that the desire or fantasy GIVES RISE TO THE INVENTION (just like the desire to fly gave rise to the airplane–the fantasy came before the cultural form).
Andy Warhol said that someday everyone would be able to be famous for fifteen minutes: The Internet/Web has evolved in RESPONSE TO THE DESIRE FOR ATTENTION (for recognition).
Why imagine that anyone would invent any cultural form if it did not fulfill some desire or fantasy.
Regards,
Richard K.
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