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Abstract
With respect to theorisations of psychical splitting, this paper explores the psychical mechanisms that underlie different forms of social splitting. The paper first outlines Freud's and Kleins different theorisations of the psychical mechanisms of splitting, where the good is split from the bad, the inside split from the outside, and the painful disavowed. I then consider the psychical mechanisms of splitting that underlie ideological supports of certain social systems, specifically that of National Socialist Germany, East Germany during the Cold War period, and neoliberal capitalism. Here, I consider ideological splits between good and evil, the relation between external and internal splits, the relation between geographical, social and internal splitting, as well as splitting as disavowal of the other.
1. Modified version of the public lecture to mark the spring convention of the German Psychoanalytical Association, Berlin, May 2012. First published in a different German version: Plänkers (Citation2014).
2. Translated by Tim Davies
3. Edited by Catherine Humble.
1. Modified version of the public lecture to mark the spring convention of the German Psychoanalytical Association, Berlin, May 2012. First published in a different German version: Plänkers (Citation2014).
2. Translated by Tim Davies
3. Edited by Catherine Humble.
Notes
1. Modified version of the public lecture to mark the spring convention of the German Psychoanalytical Association, Berlin, May 2012. First published in a different German version: Plänkers (Citation2014).
2. Translated by Tim Davies
3. Edited by Catherine Humble.
4. Wolf Biermann: 1975 song entitled Die hab ich satt! [“I'm sick and tired of the place”].
5. Translator's note: The ‘Young Pioneers’ served as the communist youth organization for children age 6 to 14.
6. Translator's note: Those taking part in a project contributed so‐called building hours, which were documented with stamps stuck into an ‘Operations Card’. Depending on the number of hours, participants were awarded a certificate and a badge: gold, silver or bronze.
7. The actual lecture has not been published but is being summarised in a congress report (Freud, Citation1922).
8. “The ego is an organization characterized by a very remarkable trend towards unification, towards
synthesis” (Freud, Citation1926b, p. 223).
9. Freud used the concept of splitting even earlier on too in respect of exclusion from the consciousness (e.g. Freud and Breuer, 1985, p. 194; Freud, Citation1909, p. 176), as initially conceived in respect of repression (Krejci, Citation2010, Citation2011a).
10. Translator's note: The German term Spaltung may sound more technical in the original, since it also translates as ‘fission’ in physics, ‘fissuring’ in geology and so on.
11. Cf. discussion of the concepts of repression and splitting in Hinshelwood (Citation2008) and Paniagua (Citation2009). Hinshelwood's apt distinction between a splitting of the ego into coherent (Freud) vs. fragmented parts (Klein) will not be discussed any further here by me; see also Krejci (Citation2010, Citation2011b).
12. Wurmser (Citation1959) examined this phenomenon in the context of severe Superego pathologies.
13. Lifton examined the “doubling” of the personality, in which a division of the self is produced into “two inter‐independently functioning wholes” (Lifton, Citation1986, p. 491) that do not fall foul of each other. Owing to splitting and denial, two views of reality can co‐exist in this way without mutually influencing each other (Freud, Citation1940a); cf. also Wurmser (Citation1959).
14. Kerz‐Rühling and Plänkers (Citation2004).
15. Translator's note: This agency is formally called the office of The Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic; informally, the office is often referred to as the Gauck office, Birthler office or Jahn office, always after the incumbent federal commissioner.
16. The page numbers refer to the interview manuscript.
17. Translator's note: The territorial army created towards the end of WWII, designed to act as a home guard.
18. From 1949 till the time of his death, Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was prime minister of China.
19. Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) was prime minister of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and president from 1955 to 1969.
20. Georg Lukács (1885–1971) was an important Hungarian philosopher and literary scholar, particularly in the field of Marxist theory.
21. Sándor Radó (1899–1981), Hungarian communist and during the Nazi period member of the ‘Red Chapel’ resistance movement.
22. HVA was the MSS's foreign intelligence service.
23. During World War II ‘Red Chapel’ was a term for resistance groups opposing the NS regime that had contacts with the Soviet Union.
24. Chi Peng Fei, contrary to what Mr G states, was never president of the CCP, but Chinese ambassador to the GDR and later China's Foreign Minister.
25. Erich Honecker (1912–1994) was General Secretary of the German Socialist Unity Party (GSUP) (1971–1989).
26. ‘Claustrum’ denotes a psychic space unconsciously entered as a retreat (cf. Meltzer, Citation1992).
27. A modern version of this theme is conceived in the film trilogy The Matrix (1999), Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Matrix Revolutions (2003).
28. “I too think it quite certain that a real change in the relations of human beings to possessions would be of more help in this direction than any ethical commands; but the recognition of this fact among socialists has been obscured and made useless for practical purposes by a fresh idealistic misconception of human nature” (Freud, Citation1930, p. 504).
29. Cf. the analysis published by Claudia Nagel (Citation2012) of the perverse nature of the financial sector characterized by splitting mechanisms and fantasies of omnipotence.
30. Cf. Alcorn and Stein, Citation2012.
31. “The concept of ordoliberalism was essentially devised by the Freiburg School of national economics to which Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Leonhard Miksch and Hans Großmann‐Doerth belonged” (German Wikipedia, accessed on 01.05.2012) and developed at the turn of the 20th century. It served as a basis for establishing the social market economy in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949. “The ideas of neoliberalism, whose foremost exponent in Germany was Eucken (*1891, died 1950), are based largely on the negative experience of unbridled liberalism of 19th century laissez‐faire, when the state left the economy totally to the free play of market forces. From the neoliberalist angle, therefore, state interventions in the economy are justified and necessary when, say, they promote market activity and prevent the formation of monopolies or cartels, equalize cyclical fluctuations or serve social equilibrium [&] With its chief representative Friedrich August von Hayek (*1899, died 1992), the Anglo‐Saxon variant invests more in self‐policing of the market economy” (Duden, Citation2009). Both traditions are closely connected with the economic programme of the so‐called Chicago school based around Milton Friedman.
32. Cf. the eye‐opening study by Tuckett and Taffler (Citation2009) on the disruption of the sense of reality in the Financial Market. Likewise, Nagel (Citation2012).
33. The financial speculation on food prices influences the food prices, because if food prices rise some people in the stock exchange make a huge profit.
34. “Nor is it always the worse for the society that it [the individual] was not part of it [the objective of its gainful employment, T.P.] By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. [&] in the exchange relationship the interest eventually finds the principle of societal common‐sense” (Smith, Citation1776, quoted after Vogl, J. Citation2010/11, p. 39f.) [Adapted from the original English‐language version]
35. By this splitting‐based consumer production and trading I mean that in capitalistic production each market participant only pursues for his own benefit without looking for the whole. Market participants are not integrated, but split or fragmented parts of the society.
36. David Tuckett (Citation2011) has demonstrated, e.g. in a study of fund managers, how their sphere of work promotes states of mental divisiveness (‘splitness’): e.g. splits between the commissioning client and that of the fund, or those between long‐term investment objectives and short‐term performance aspirations. Claudia Nagel (Citation2012, pp. 48ff.) refers to the fact that the financial products developed in the field of investment are incomprehensible even to many bankers.
37. Thus, the economist and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, in January 2012 in Davos, said that capitalism in its present form no longer fits in with our age.