Art, pyschoanalysis and humour

More Milbank eventually, I promise! But in the meantime, Becky Hunter and I are doing an online residency for the Philadelphia arts blog concept plus object. We're talking about art, psychoanalysis and humour, and why some of the people who first saw the artist Agnes Martin's abstract piece Desert responded to it with laughter. Check it out.

Image credit: pop pervert

Lacan on the Gospels

What is recounted by the four texts described as evangelical not so much because they are good news as good announcers for their sort of news... They write in such a way that there is not a single fact that cannot be contested in them ... but that these texts are nonetheless what go right to the heart of truth, the truth as such, up to and including the fact that I state that one can only half-say it ... In this style of things, you cannot say better than the Gospels. One cannot say the truth any better. That is why they are Gospels.

From Lacan's seminar Encore, as quoted by Cormac Gallagher.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

People sometimes think that, for Freud, everything was about sex. Disappointing though it is, it turns out that’s not quite true. Starting out, Freud thought that people had two basic motivations: the pleasure principle, which makes us want to avoid pain and seek out pleasure (and is quite a lot about sex) and the ego instinct, which makes us want to not die (less sexy). But then he changed his mind, because he realised that the more energy you spend looking after yourself in narcissism the less interested you are in sex (think about that next time you look in the mirror, folks). Our instincts for pleasure and for self-preservation are both functions of the libido, which can be directed outwardly or inwardly. So at this point, it really is mostly about sex. But then, in 1920, Freud wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which argued that as well as the libido, we’re motivated by another fundamental principle: the death drive. So, it’s not all about sex, but it is all about either sex or death.

Freud says that the idea of the death drive came from his observations of types of repetition of painful experiences. Firstly, people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder relive, in dreams or in flashbacks, the event which originally traumatised them. Secondly, people who’ve had terrible relationships in the past tend to seek out similarly dreadful relationships, either in their marriages, their friendships or in their relationship with their therapist. And finally, Freud talks about repetition in children’s games, giving the example of 1 ½ year old nephew who started playing a game which involved throwing things under the bed, which Freud eventually realised was his re-enactment of the traumatic moment of his mother leaving. All of this examples of compulsive repetition throw a big spanner in the works of Freud’s theory that we’re basically all driven to seek out pleasure. Why would people deliberately repeat and relive painful experiences?

Freud goes on to argue that all living things have an urge to return to an earlier state of being (this would be something like the tendency towards entropy). Living things basically want to remain in a state of stability and unchangingness; they only change and develop if they’re forced to do so by external circumstances. And of course, the ultimate state of original stability is death: all life, says Freud, aims at death, though sometimes it gets distracted along the way by the need to defend itself from things which would force it into dying in the wrong sort of way. Various things may prevent us regressing to an earlier state, forcing us into creativity and growth; but all the time, regardless, we are aiming not for progress but for death.

Cheery stuff, no? It’s not the happiest theory, but it is a powerful one that explains a lot, both in terms of particular psychological disturbances and in terms of the general human capability for violence and destructiveness. But if Freud’s right, if there is a death instinct, an intrinsic desire for death in us, that raises all sorts of theological questions about the goodness of creation, the nature of sin, human identity. Oo er.

Photo credit: tstadler

Totem and Taboo Three

We've established, then, that Freud thinks that 'primitive' societies can tell us something about the evolution of all human societies, and found out about the totem system which regulates who you are and aren't allowed to sleep with, and has a whole complicated set of rules for how to relate to your totem animal: when you can and can't kill it, how to appease it if you make it angry, all that stuff.

This is where the psychoanalysis kicks in. Freud thinks that children and 'savages' relate to the world and particularly to animals in very similar ways: both see animals as equals, rather than as lower beings. The things we learn from the psychoanalysis of children can be read back into the psychology of 'primitive' societies. Freud has found that children sometimes develop phobias of animals, which have some similarities to the ways that totem societies relate to animals, trying to avoid seeing or touching the animals. Because kids are kids, it's not always possible to work out where the phobia came from, but that doesn't stop Freud deducing this: childrens' fear of animals is always a displacement of an underlying fear of the child's father. It's the Oedipus complex, stupid: Freud thinks that all small boys fancy their mums, and as a result want to kill their fathers. But because daddy is big and strong, the boys are afraid that they will lose out in the battle for their mothers' love, and that their father will castrate them. Eventually, they resolve this fear by identifying with their father and giving up their desire for their mother which eventually resurfaces as the desire for other women: that's why men marry women like their mothers.

Still with me? This is Freud's argument: that the totem animal on which tribal systems are based is a substitute for the figure of the father. His theory about the origins of human society goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, most humans lived in small hordes, each dominated by a powerful man, who was the absolute ruler of the horde, with unrestricted power and exclusive access to the women. Any sons who were born into the horde had a rough time: if they did anything to make their father jealous, they were killed, castrated, or driven out, in which case they had to make their own way, robbing wives for themselves from other hordes until they could be the ruler of their own horde. Eventually, the expelled brothers banded together to kill their father and, as was the done thing at the time, ate him, raw (nom nom). Primitive men's attitude to their father was the same as the attitude of children in our society: on the one hand they hated and feared him, but on the other, they honoured him as a model and wanted to take his place, and cannibalism was a way of identifying with him.

Once they'd killed the father, the brothers realised that they needed to cooperate or have to keep killing each other until there was only one of them left, so they agreed to form the first societies, creating laws which forbade them from sleeping with each others' wives and forced them to share. This is the origin of all morality, justice and society, all of which arise from the primal guilt resulting from the murder of the father, and the desire to atone for this original sin. The brothers chose an animal to represent their father, and displaced their ambivalent attitude to the father onto the totem animal, which on the one hand was seen as the clan's blood ancestor and protective spirit, and on the other was regularly and ritually killed in the clan's festivals, and, like the father, eaten.

As religion evolved, the totem gradually evolved into a god with a human form, and this allowed the animal sacrifice to return, eventually, to human sacrifice, which we see in Christianity, the most highly evolved of all the religions. Christ sacrificed his life to atone for the guilt arising from the murder of the Father, but even here we see some of the ambivalence to the father: in the same act which pays for the murder of the father, Christ achieves what primal man wanted to achieve, and replaces the father, becoming a god himself: the religion of the son replaces the religion of the father, and instead of eating the body of the father, it is Christ's body and blood which are consumed in religious ritual.

Communion, anyone?

Photo credit: Oedipus and Antigone, litmuse on Flickr

Totem and Taboo Two

We've established, then, that Freud thinks that by looking at 'primitive' tribes we can gain important insights about the origins of human culture. In particular, he's interested in societies which are structured by systems of totem because he thinks that these societies are the most primitive and exemplify a stage of culture which all other societies have gone through at some point. Within totemic societies, the rule tends to be that you can't marry anyone within your own tribe. This is particularly interesting to Freud, because the 'prohibition on incest' (The rule that says you can't sleep with your mum/sister/brother/dad/cousin' etc.) is one of the most universal human laws: different societies have different ideas about who you can and can't sleep with, but they all have some sort of prohibition on incest.

It's easy to assume that societies ban incest because it's fundamentally wrong and icky, but Freud points out the problem with this line of reasoning: if it's so essentially repugnant to people, why have laws against it, and punishments for it? Societies make laws against the things that people want to do: killing people, taking their stuff; not so much about doing things that no one would want to do in the first place: find me the society that severely sanctions those people who eat their own poo or refuse to go to sleep, and I shall be surprised, to say the least.


Anyway, totems. In totemic societies, people belong to tribes which each have a 'totem', their tribal symbol. It's usually an animal, but sometimes a plant or a force of nature, like the wind. Here are twelve characteristics of totemic societies:

1. The totem animal is usually not allowed to be killed or eaten, but tribal members will rear and look after animals of the totem species.


2. Totem animals that die accidentally are mourned and buried as though they were a member of the tribe.


3. The prohibition on eating sometimes refers only to a certain part of the animal.


4. If it’s necessary to kill one of the totem animals, there's usually a ritual in which excuses are made to the animal (we're sorry, we were really hungry, we just really like bacon), and attempts are made to try and avoid the punishment which is the inevitable consequence of violating the taboo (look, you're not really dead; I didn't kill you - he did; hey, look, a unicorn!)


5. If the animal is ritually sacrificed, it is solemnly mourned.


6. At specified social occasions, people wear the skins of totem animals.


7. Tribes and individuals assume the names of totem animals.


8. Many tribes use pictures of animals as coats of arms, or have tattooes of them.


9. If the totem is a dangerous animal, it’s assumed that it will spare the members of the tribe named after it. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't always quite work out like this, but if someone's killed by a totem animal, it's just assumed that they had done something naughty and Deserved It.


10. The totem animal protects and warns tribal members (Lassie, anyone?)


11. The totem animal foretells the future to those faithful to it and serves as their leader.


12. The members of a totem tribe often believe they’re connected with the totem animal by the bond of common origin: that is to say, the totem animal is the father of the tribe whose totem it is.

Coming soon: what this all means for the origin of human society, religion, and the concept of God.

Totem and Taboo

Sigmund Freud isn’t a theologian, but he profoundly shaped the way that twentieth-and-twenty-first-century Westerners think about the world, and although scientists tend not to take him very seriously (how would you set up an experiment to test whether all men fancy their mothers?), he’s been incredibly influential on continental philosophy, which in turn is incredibly influential on a lot of modern theology.

Totem and Taboo isn't, as you might expect, just about psychoanalysis. Instead, it's an attempt to use the findings of psychoanalysis to gain insight into the origins of human society as it is about psychoanalysis. Freud is writing at a time when there was an explosion of interest in the tribal societies which European colonialists were encountering and trying to civilise all over the world. J G Frazer had written his book The Golden Bough, intended to be a universal theory of human mythology, which described the myths, magic, religion and social practices of some of these newly discovered cultures. The disciplines of anthropology and sociology were just beginning, and anthropologists in particular were studying tribes in the Australias, the Americas, and all sorts of other places which looked, to them, to be pretty primitive. They thought that by studying these tribes they could find out things about the origins of human society. These are the sorts of discussions that Totem and Taboo engages with. It’s pretty racist, with lots of comments about 'backward and wretched' savage and primitive races, and has plenty of questionable assumptions, but I think that's basically what you get when you read Freud, or indeed almost anyone else from that era.

These are his basic ideas:

• All societies evolved in basically the same way: the only real difference between European culture and, say Australian aborigines, is that European culture is more evolved.
• By looking at ‘primitive’ tribes, we can work out what sort of societies we evolved from. These tribes are basically the equivalent of archaeological finds: just as the pots and burial mounds we dig up tell us about the past, by looking at these primitive tribes we can find out how our ancestors lived.
• We’re not so different from the ‘savage’ races as we think. Crucially, by using the insights of the psychoanalytical study of mentally ill people and children, we can draw conclusions about the way that primitive societies developed some of their key ideas and social structures.

Coming soon: Freud’s theory of the origin of human culture. And yes, it does involve sex.

Photo credit: Carla216 on Flickr