The paper is an application of psychoanalytic theory
to examine the psychology and traumas of globally important leaders —Trump,
Putin, Xi — the Troika. It also discusses psychoanalytic theory’s value
in public discourse about the public interest.
Freud’s
Project for Scientific Psychology and his Structural Theory of
the psyche are used as the frameworks for analyzing Troika’s pathologies. Observed circumstances,
speeches, public information, and the invisible forces in the psyche as data,
the paper reasons that the life and death instincts and the neuronal ‘machine that runs by
Itself’, organized by the early experiences of these
global leaders, drive the Troika’s destructive actions. These profoundly impact the citizens of the
world.
The
paper recognizes and expands on Freud’s important generalization (in Neurosis
and Psychosis):
“Transference
neuroses [phobias, hysterias] correspond to a conflict between the ego and the
id; narcissistic [psycho]neuroses [schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder] to a
conflict between the ego and the super-ego; and psychoses to one between the
ego and the external world.”
This
invites a diagnosis of ‘(persistent) asymptomatic psychosis’, as the
author proposed in an earlier paper because, for Troika, pathological
super-ego and id conflicts have not been confined between the ego and the
external world (in a hypothetical consulting room) but spilled over to the
external world, as Freud writes in his paper “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis
and Psychosis:”
“We call behavior ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’, if it combines certain features of both reactions [neurotic and psychotic] — if it disavows the reality as little as does a neurosis, but if it then exerts itself, as does a psychosis, to effect an alteration of that reality; … it does not stop … at effecting internal changes. It is no longer autoplastic but alloplastic.”
Based
on theory and evidence, it is inferred in the paper that the members of the
Troika -- Trump, Putin, and X -- have fallen prey to a persistent asymptomatic
psychosis from conflicts between the external world (Trump), the super-ego
(Putin), and the id (Xi) that are now acted out in the real world. It is
further inferred that their rise to power could not have happened without the
support of the surrounding ‘cultural community’ where a large share of members
is affected by emotional disorders Freud and Volkan discuss in their papers on
groups.
The
paper concludes with a discussion of the present state of psychoanalytic theory
and its prospects for use in public discourse regarding social and political
issues. To complement the social and natural sciences, psychoanalysis and its
theories merit being brought from the consulting rooms into discussions about
the public interest, but with this distinction: psychoanalysis’ hypotheses and
analyses relate to the “unconscious ideas, unconscious trains of thought,
unconscious impulses as though they were no less valid and unimpeachable
psychological data than conscious ones” (Freud 1901/1925). The application of psychoanalysis offers
critical realism about the unconscious.
Keywords:
Psychoanalysis, Psychosis, Trauma, Trump, Putin, Xi, Social and political
discourse
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.