Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:42:16.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Power, Civilization and the Psychology of Conscience1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

E. V. Walter
E. V. Walter
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

After the first world war, Paul Valéry spoke for the entire generation when he observed that Western civilization had learned that it was mortal, and that “a civilization is as fragile as a life.” Thoughtful people discussed Oswald Spengler's work, began to criticize the idea of progress, revived cyclical theories of cultural decline, and were deeply stirred by the idea that Western civilization was in a state of decay. Since that time there has been no end to jeremiads and diagnoses judging that the crisis of our time is caused by the loss of spiritual convictions, the eclipse of transcendental values, the decline of morality, or the breakdown of traditional belief systems.

Frequently, the writings in this genre have offered not sound diagnoses but merely truisms and dolorous representations of symptoms; nevertheless, concealed in them lurks a psychological truth. The breakdown in morality and traditional beliefs, stimulated by rapid social change, mass society and secularization, has helped to devitalize the psychological bearer of conscience and morality: the superego. Historically, the cultivation of the superego had propagated civilized men and a system of internal controls. Now the deterioration of the superego has brought crisis for political power and regression for civilization.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 1959 , pp. 641 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Valéry, Paul, “Le crise de l'esprit,” The Athenaeum (London), 1919, pp. 182–84Google Scholar.

3 The most cogent sociological analysis is the now classic work by Mannheim, Karl, Diagnosis of our Time (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1943)Google Scholar.

4 “A Discourse on Political Economy,” trans. Cole, G. D. H., in The Social Contract and Discourses (Everyman's Library; New York: Dutton, 1950), p. 295Google Scholar.

5 Studies in History and Jurisprudence (New York: Oxford, 1901), p. 471Google Scholar.

6 Merriam, Charles E., Political Power (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950), p. 21Google Scholar.

7 Ibid.

8 See The Sociology of George Simmel, trans. Wolff, Kurt (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950), p. 192Google Scholar.

9 In a comprehensive work that is little known today, a conservative writer of last century claimed that all political forms may be derived from the collective patterns in which minorities manage to satisfy mass needs. See von Haller, Karl Ludwig, Restauration der Staats-Wissenschaft, 6 Bde (2te Aufl.; Winterthur: Steinerischen Buchhandlung, 1820–1834)Google Scholar. Haller's perspective is important, but he was reluctant to recognize the other side—that political superiors also need the services of their subordinates.

10 Dahl, R. A. and Lindblom, C. E., Politics, Economics and Welfare (New York: Harper 1953), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

11 Bergler, Edmund, The Superego: Unconscious Conscience (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1952), p. vii; italics in the originalGoogle Scholar.

12 Lasswell, Harold D., “Impact of Psychoanalytic Thinking on the Social Sciences,” in White, L. D. (ed.), The State of the Social Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 89Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Coleman, Marie, “Integrative Approach to Individual and Group Psychology,” Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 36 (1949), pp. 389–402Google ScholarPubMed.

14 Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo (first published in 1913), trans. Brill, A. A., in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New York: The Modern Library, 1938)Google Scholar; Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, trans. Strachey, James (London: Hogarth, 1949)Google Scholar.

15 Jones, Ernest, “The Genesis of the Superego,” Papers on Psychoanalysis (5th ed.; London: Buillière, Tindall and Cox, 1948), pp. 145–52Google Scholar.

16 Freud, , An Outline of Psychoanalysis, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1949), p. 19Google Scholar.

17 Freud, Totem and Taboo, op. cit.; The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (New York: Doubleday, 1957); Civilization and its Discontents, trans. Riviere, Joan (London: Hogarth, 1930)Google Scholar; Moses and Monotheism, trans. Jones, Katherine (New York: Knopf, 1939)Google Scholar.

18 An Outline of Psychoanalysis, pp. 123, 124.

19 Cf. Sachs, Wulf, Black Anger (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947)Google Scholar.

20 Cf. Freud, , The Problem of Lay-Analyses, trans. Maerker-Branden, A. P. (New York: Brentano, 1927), p. 125Google Scholar.

21 Totem and Taboo, pp. 919, 922.

22 Cf. Bergler, Edmund, The Battle of the Conscience (Washington, D. C.: Washington Institute of Medicine, 1948)Google Scholar; The Superego: Unconscious Conscience, op. cit.

23 A Grammar of Politics (5th ed.; London: Allen and Unwin, 1948), p. 290Google Scholar.

24 Neumann, Franz, “Anxiety and Politics,” in The Democratic and the Authoritarian State, ed. Marcuse, Herbert (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957), p. 278 ff.Google Scholar

25 Bagehot, Walter, “Caesarism after Thirteen Years,” The Economist (London), 1865Google Scholar, in The Works of Walter Bagehot, ed. Morgan, Forrest (Hartford, Connecticut: Traveler's Insurance Company, 1891), Vol. 2, p. 440 ffGoogle Scholar. Franz Neumann, “Anxiety and Politics,” loc. cit.; Behemoth: the Structure and Practice of National Socialism (New York: Oxford, 1942), pp. 465–67Google Scholar.

26 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The original German title used the word Massenpsychologie, and perhaps “mass psychology” would be a more appropriate translation.

27 Ibid., p. 80. Freud later substituted the term “superego” for “ego ideal.” Today, in the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, “ego ideal” refers to only a part of the superego.

28 Cf. Hartmann, Heinz, “On Rational and Irrational Action,” Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences (New York: International Universities Press), Vol. 1 (1947), pp. 359–92Google Scholar.

29 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, pp. 102, 77.

30 Federn, Paul, Zur Psychologic der Revolution: Die Vaterlose Gesellschaft (Wien: Anzengruber-Verlag Brüder Suschitzky, 1919)Google Scholar, expanded from an article in Der Österreichische Volkswirt, 1919.

31 Gibb, H. A. R., “The Structure of Religious Thought in Islam,” The Muslim World, Vol. 38 (1948), p. 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 “Anxiety and Politics,” loc. cit.

33 Altheim contends that in Rome the nobles purged superstitio from religio, but that the other classes did not. See Altheim, Franz, A History of Roman Religion, trans. Mattingly, Harold (London: Methuen, 1938), p. 333 ff.Google Scholar

34 Cf. Farrington, Benjamin, Head and Hand in Ancient Greece (London: Watts, 1947)Google Scholar. The classical view of religion as a form of thought control has been restated often. In Elizabethan times, Richard Hooker observed that laws “have no farther power than over our outward actions only, whereas unto men's inward cogitations, unto the privy intents and motions of their hearts, religion serveth for a bridle.” Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V. ii. 3Google Scholar.

35 Polybius vi. 56. Cf. Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius (London: Oxford, 1957), Vol. 1, p. 741Google Scholar.

36 Cicero De Div.; De Leg. ii.

37 “The Treatise on the Laws,” in The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, 2 vols., trans. Barham, Francis (London: Spettigue, 1842), Vol. 2, p. 111Google Scholar.

38 De Leg. ii. 14; trans. Barham, Francis, in The Treatises of Cicero, ed. Yonge, C. D. (London: Bell, 1887), pp. 444–45Google Scholar.

39 Livy 1. 19.

40 Ibid., trans. D. Spillan (New York: Harper, 1896), Vol. 1, p. 39.

41 Ibid., trans. W. M. Roberts (Everyman's Library; London: Dent, 1926), Vol. 1, p. 23.

42 Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950), p. 274Google Scholar.

43 Barth, Karl, The Church and the Political Problem of our Day (New York: Scribner, 1939), p. 31Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., pp. 37, 41; italics in the original.

45 Waelder, Robert, “Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism: Psychological Comments on a Problem of Power,” in Psychoanalysis and Culture (New York: International Universities Press, 1951), p. 185Google Scholar.

46 H. J. Laski, op. cit., p. 259.

47 Bettelheim, Bruno, “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 38 (1943), pp. 417–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Likewise, Jones discusses cases of individuals who insisted that since Hitler was irresistible, he must also be right. Jones, Ernest, “The Psychology of Quislingism,” Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis (London: Hogarth, 1951), Vol. 1, p. 280Google Scholar.

49 See Scholmer, Joseph, Vorkuta, trans. Kee, Robert (New York: Holt, 1955)Google Scholar.

50 Robert Waelder, op. cit., p. 195.

51 Lasswell, Harold D., “The Triple-Appeal Principle,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 37 (1932), 537CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Fenichel, Otto, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945), p. 294Google Scholar; cf. Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego; Alexander, Franz and Staub, Hugo, The Criminal, the Judge, and the Public (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931)Google Scholar.

53 “The Triple-Appeal Principle,” loc. cit., pp. 537–38.

54 Kautsky, Karl, Terrorismus und Kommunismus; ein Beitrag zur Naturgeschichte der Revolution (Berlin: Verlag Neues Vaterland, 1919)Google Scholar.

55 Civilization and its Discontents, p. 20; “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Collected Papers (London: Hogarth, 1953), Vol. 4, p, 301Google Scholar.

56 Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England (2d ed.; London: Macmillan, 1878), Vol. 2, p. 626Google Scholar.

57 Bryce, op. cit., p. 498.

58 Camus, Albert, The Rebel, trans. Bower, Anthony (New York: Knopf, 1956), p. 305Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.