Psychodynamics of Culture -Authoritarian Sadism & Spontaneity

[논둑길맨발로]

Spontaneity or Robopathy?

by William Manson / September 3rd, 2011

In the United States today, in this forbidding 21st century, everyday “life” is an anxiety-driven race to nowhere, a stress-filled sprint on the work-and-spend treadmill. Ultimately, one may fall off–a casualty in the globalized battle for ever-increasing profits—thereby descending into the growing ranks of the “dis-employed” (i.e., those now-redundant “surplus-persons” on the receiving end of automation and offshoring).

Not unlike the suffering of confined or abused animals—which may exhibit enlarged adrenal glands and obesity–real human beings struggle to adapt to the chronic stress of either trying to “hold down a job”—under ever-increasing demands—or trying to pay bills after being terminated. Engaging in an ongoing (and ultimately futile?) struggle to cope or adjust, many become addicted to food, drink, drugs (“medications”?), TV, shopping, the Internet or even headphones.

Yet who, one might ask, thrives under such brutalizing conditions—in which one is treated (and expected to behave) like an object, like a thing which satisfies all standards for efficiency and productivity–calibrated to the precise calculation of keystrokes? An object, expected to vocalize a carefully modulated, synthetic cheerfulness (“customer service”), expected to submit to the inexorable requirements of the real machines to which (s)he is symbiotically dependent? Brutalizing conditions, in which automaton-like “adaptability” and stunted sensibility are notably advantageous deficiencies? Fifty years ago, radical sociologist C. Wright Mills asked whether “there will come to prevail, or even flourish, what may be called the Cheerful Robot?”¹ If his dire prophecy has since materialized, it can only be attributed to the triumph of all-encompassing “market-values,” in which the most “efficient” and “productive” employees have been harnessed to the inflexible machine-logic of the Computer Age.

From autonomous, free-thinking individuals to persons entirely “re-formed” into trained appendages of the machines and gadgets which dominate the automated workplace. The dreadful outcome, in human terms? De-humanization: the atrophy of mature, emotional development, the blockage of expressive spontaneity. Maximal efficiency equals the machine-like predictability of an affectless, calculating, “technomorphic” mentality. Within such a milieu, in which human experience is mechanized and commodified, spontaneous human expressivity becomes increasingly pathologized. Forty years ago, the psychologist Lewis Yablonsky had already noted: “Being open in speech; being unashamed of one’s body; relating to nature; hugging, touching, feeling and making love to other people; refusing to serve in the army and kill; and becoming less dependent on machines are generally considered ‘disturbed behavior’ by a society of robopaths.”²

Biophilia, an affinity and reverence for living things, has been emphasized as an innate human predisposition by biologists, as well as by countless artists and philosophers.³ Drawn to contact with living nature, healthy human beings in turn avoid the lifeless, automated, over-organized techno-industrial system (which Lewis Mumford termed the “Megamachine”). One’s own direct, unmediated experience—of sea and sky, of insouciant forest creatures, of birds soaring and whirling above—can only enrich one’s own withered spontaneity and expressive aliveness. Of course, human intimacy—the shared affections of informal, cooperative living—may also flourish, once people have liberated themselves (as much as possible) from the dominating impersonality and hierarchical subordination of the hi-tech workplace.

1. “In our own time [1959!], must we not face the possibility that the human mind as a social fact might be deteriorating in quality and cultural level, and yet not many would notice it because of the overwhelming accumulation of technological gadgets?” C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 171, 175. [↩]
2. Lewis Yablonsky, Robopaths: People as Machines, Penguin, 1972, p. 43. [↩]
3. Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, Harvard University Press, 1984. I might add that the radical psychoanalyst Erich Fromm first used the term, and outlined the optimal conditions conducive to such an attitude, in several books written in the Sixties and Seventies. [↩]

This article was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Culture, General.

Authoritarian Sadism: The Sociopathy of Bush

by William Manson / February 16th, 2011

Former President George W. Bush’s dreadful legacy of destruction rivals that of other modern authoritarian rulers who recklessly trampled human rights and laid waste to the lives of hundred of thousands of people.  But were his injurious policies—from willfully wrecking an entire nation (Iraq) to authorizing torture to cutting children’s health care—simply the result of his benighted, right-wing ideology?  Or is the ideology in itself simply politicized cruelty—crushing the recalcitrant “enemy” abroad while slashing social programs and criminalizing the poor domestically?  In short, is 21st century Social Darwinism merely the manifest superstructure of an underlying, irresistible urge to dominate and/or destroy?  Describing the emotional tenor of Nazism, Ron Rosenbaum has referred to “an irrational hatred that can assume the guise, the mantle, of an ideological antipathy but which is primitive in the sense of being prior to ideology—its source rather than its product.” ¹

In his Escape From Freedom, the radical psychoanalyst Erich Fromm described the features of authoritarian psychology: hierarchical relations (dominance/submission), military nationalism, and the worship of brute-technical force.  To the authoritarian character, Fromm wrote, “the world is composed of people with power and those without it.  The very sight of a powerless person makes him want to attack, dominate, humiliate him.”  The prototype for the dominant-vengeful ruler was the authoritarian father who harshly punished disobedience through physical and/or emotional abuse.  The cycle perpetuated itself, as the humiliated child, displacing his rage through a potent “identification with the aggressor,” would himself eventually experience the power-thrill of dominating the weak. ²

In Bush’s case, as the psychoanalyst Justin Frank noted in his devastatingly revealing Bush on the Couch, the authoritarian-punitive parent who administered harsh disciplines was his mother.  In a chapter entitled “The Smirk,” Dr. Frank offered abundant evidence for Bush’s sadism and destructiveness, from blowing up frogs as a child to rubber-stamping the execution of a record number of death-row inmates while governor of Texas.  Ultimately: “The sadism that motivated the war [was] evident in Bush’s lack of a plan for postwar Iraq: the invasion was an end in itself.” ³   Given the dynamics of a dominant-punitive mother and remote, often-absent father, Bush’s sadism seems to have been complemented by compensatory displays of “protest masculinity”–such as his belligerent rhetoric, or swaggering in a flightsuit aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

I might note as well as that, according to the diagnostic manual of American psychiatry, youthful cruelty to animals as well as substance abuse are predisposing factors to a possible adult diagnosis of sociopathy (“antisocial personality disorder”).  Certainly Bush often exhibited the roguish charm of the con-artist, as he gratuitously lied or invented “facts”–and blithely broke laws, shredded treaties, ordered (illegal) torture and joked about not finding WMD under his desk.  Indeed, manifestations of Bush’s lawless mentality—such as deceitfulness, impulsivity, aggressiveness, irresponsibility, reckless disregard and lack of remorse—are defining traits of sociopathy. ⁴   Evidently, as members of an elite profession, psychiatrists were reluctant even to consider that the individual holding the most elite position in the country was significantly sociopathic.  Perhaps more insidiously, as Dr. Frank suggested, the leader Bush became a sadistic role-model, “normalizing” the unleashing of aggressive, vengeful attitudes in everyday social life.

Authoritarian social relations are hierarchical power relations, whether in patriarchal families or in the militarization of society as a whole.  The compulsive need to dominate: top Bush administration figures were impatient to vindictively crush defiant former clients such as Saddam Hussein, to bend them into submission or destroy them entirely.  The eagerness to “go to war,” with only the flimsiest of pretexts for doing so, inadvertently revealed the anxiously awaited delight in cruelty: the anticipated satisfactions of punishing, killing, and destroying “targets.”

It is hard to deny the enduring link in American culture between authoritarian upbringing, right-wing ideology and the cult of militarism.  Identification-with-the-aggressor: insofar as “they are powerless,” demonized foreigners “offer a vast opportunity for sadistic satisfaction” for a soldier otherwise consigned to a humiliatingly low-status back home.  The power to kill or dominate, total control over helpless victims: most infamously exhibited in the unmistakable enjoyment of the perpetrators at Abru Ghraib. Once ordinary people—whether in Iraq or elsewhere—were demonized as the “enemy,” there was little limit to the sadism inflicted (and tacitly accepted by Bush and his gang).  Military sadism on a mass scale has also been grotesquely exhibited in such fiendish, redundantly cruel weapons of torment such as white phosphorus, napalm and cluster bombs.

In his last major work The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm offered this psycho-political insight: “The sadomasochist has also been called the ‘authoritarian character,’ translating the psychological aspect of his character structure into a political attitude.  The concept finds its justification in the fact that persons whose political attitude is generally described as authoritarian (active and passive) usually exhibit (in our society) the traits of the sadomasochistic character: control of those below and submission to those above.” ⁵

1. Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, Random House, 1998; p. 188 [↩]
2. Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, Fawcett Books, 1965 [1941], pps. 190-191. See also: Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002 [↩]
3. Justin Frank, M.D., Bush on the Couch, Regan Books, 2004; p. 118 [↩]
4. Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, 4th edition, 1994; pps. 98-99, 704-706 [↩]
5. Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973; pps. 290-292 [↩]

William Manson is the author of The Psychodynamics of Culture (Greenwood Press). Read other articles by William.

This article was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under GWB, Military/Militarism, Psychology/Psychiatry.