Jun
13
The limits of psychoanalysis and of the Democratic Party
June 13, 2003 |
The science fiction writer David Brin recently opined that the reason Democrats can’t win is that their view of society is so dire. Democrats—indeed liberals—brought us women’ rights, racial progress, sexual freedom and more—but somehow Dems can’t make a “product” that excites the voters.
My first reaction was to make a list of the top ten things brought to you by liberals, starting with the items above, but then I began to wonder, “what is it about the liberal point of view that causes us to emphasize the negative—the crises—as our reason for being?”
And then I had an interesting discussion with a psychoanalyst. His view of his patients is that they are filled with “pools of pain” that need to be surfaced and excised. Strength, in his view, comes from the mind—from the “ego” (German for “I”) in Freud’s terms. Thus the nature of psychoanalytic therapy is to help ego extend its dominance to where “id” or impulse—including painful impulses, lives.
I asked him about another point of view, one I find compelling, that within each person is a source of deep spiritual strength—some might call it “Being” or the divine, or Buddha nature. According to this point of view, various practices can be used to help us discover this inner nature—this ultimate ground of reality that joins all of us—and express and enjoy the realization of this deeper nature in our daily experience.
The psychoanalyst’s somewhat dismissive reply was that such “positive thinking” was unlikely, in his experience, to be curative.
Ok, so how does all this relate to the Democratic party? I think that the ideology animating the party is far too focused on “pockets of pain”—each of which is thought to exist within particular social groups—working families, racial and ethnic minorities, women.—and on the view that these pockets of pain need to be excised by government programs.
By contrast, within society there is the social counterpart of “being”—the deep, resilient inner strength of individuals and communities gathered together to shape the world. It is this quality of being that needs to be recognized and supported in society. This drive to be free, to live fuller lives, to simply be happy is the core of all that is dynamic in our country. It is what you feel as you walk down a street in the city on a good day—it is what you feel everywhere youth has the lead—in college towns, in clubs, and in street demonstrations. It is what you feel in the arts, in music, in dance, in fine cooking, and in love.
We must of course be wary of simplistic positive thinking—of pretending that individual or social problems will go away simply by renaming them or encouraging people to “help themselves.” And it is in reaction to this sort of denial that many Democrats, in fairness, have come to demand recognition and action to alleviate painful realities in society. But a party that does not relate to the deeper, vibrant, passionate core of living will wither away. It will be all pain and programs. It will not be a successful “party” in ether the political or the celebratory sense of the word.
To the extent anything is “curative” in human life, my own experience, in contrast to the psychoanalyst’s, is that such come through recognizing and expressing being, whether within the individual or across our society. It is interesting to mull over how we might develop a “politics of being” to embrace and expand upon the most dynamic aspects of our culture.
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