Abstract
This chapter argues that if we want to fully understand the political popularity of people like Donald Trump, we should return to Freud’s theory of the group formation and his notion of emotional identification. As a form of group hypnosis, Right-wing populism relies on followers suspending their critical faculties as they access parts of their unconscious id, and psychoanalysis helps us to understand how these unconscious processes function in political movements.
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Notes
- 1.
Freud, S. (1975). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. New York: WW Norton & Company, p. 44.
- 2.
Lacan, J. (1998). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis (Vol. 11). New York: WW Norton & Company, p. 272.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 273.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 272.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Freud, Group psychology, p. 45.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 39.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Lacan, Four fundamental, p. 275.
- 12.
Freud, Group psychology, p. 47.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 49.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid., pp. 52–53.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 52.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
In Lacan’s later works, he realizes that his original theory of Symbolic mediation represents an endorsement of linguistic and social alienation. He then argues that we need to find a way to separate from the Symbolic Other, who has no real actual existence but is defined by a set of social beliefs.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 53.
- 22.
For instance, Hobbes bases the need for the social contract on the fear of living in a state of natural war and anarchy.
- 23.
Freud, Group psychology, p. 53.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 54.
- 25.
Ibid., pp. 54–55.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 55.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 56.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Freud posits that the sons are only able to overcome the primal father when they move from nonsexual identification with each other to homosexual object love, which has the result of freeing their libido so they have the ability to kill off the father (Group psychology, p. 56., note 1). From this perspective fascist groups have to repress homosexuality so that the homosocial bonding of the followers can emerge. As Freud insists, the military and the church represent this same need to replace homosexuality with a nonsexual bond between the followers and with the leader.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 57.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 57, notes, 1–2.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 59.
- 37.
Eric Fromm’s work often focuses on why people try to escape their own freedom by submitting themselves to the will of powerful others. Fromm, E. (1994). Escape from freedom. New York: Macmillan.
- 38.
Felman, S., & Laub, D. (1992). Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. New York: Taylor & Francis.
- 39.
Žižek, In defense of lost causes, pp. 264–233.
- 40.
Klein, N. (2015). No logo. Montreal: Éditions Actes Sud.
- 41.
Freud, S., Strachey, J., & Freud, A. (1978). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. London: Hogarth Press.
- 42.
Achen, C. and Bartels, L. (2016, 23 May), Do Sanders supporters favor his policies? The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/opinion/campaign-stops/do-sanders-supporters-favor-his-policies.html?_r=0.
- 43.
Wilson, J.K. (1995). The myth of political correctness: The conservative attack on higher education. Raleigh: Duke University Press.
- 44.
Miller, J.A. (2006). On shame. In J. Clemens, & R. Grigg (Eds.), Jacques Lacan and the other side of psychoanalysis: reflections on Seminar XVII. Raleigh: Duke University Press.
- 45.
Fallows, J. (1997). Breaking the news: How the media undermine American democracy. New York: Vintage.
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Samuels, R. (2016). Trump and Sanders on the Couch: Neoliberal Populism on the Left and the Right. In: Psychoanalyzing the Left and Right after Donald Trump. Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44808-4_4
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