Psycho-Politics Conference Explores Ideology and Psy-Sciences

The Department of Cognitive Sciences together with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences organized a two-day conference with the title “Psycho-politics: The Cross-Sections of Science and Ideology in the History of Psy-sciences” on October 30 and 31 exploring the relationship between psy-sciences and politics.

The conference began with keynote speaker Michael Molnar, former director of the Freud Museum in London who detailed the museum's difficulties representing psychoanalysis through art. In the late 1980s, artist Rachel Withers was hired as an artist in residence. Part of her exhibition was her manifestation of Freud's analysis of “The Museum of Human Excrement” dream from his book “The Interpretation of Dreams,” which was, as Molnar described it, “a Victorian bell jar with a heap of excrement in the middle, surrounded by twigs and grass.” She created the excrement out of poly filler and gilded it with gold paint very tastefully, he noted. It is widely believed that the long, excrement-covered bench Freud describes in the dream is the famous couch on which patients lie as they are analyzed.

The audience at "Psycho‐Politics: The Cross‐Sections of Science and Ideology in the History of Psy‐Sciences" listens as the conference is opened. Image credit: CEU
The audience at "Psycho‐Politics: The Cross‐Sections of Science and Ideology in the History of Psy‐Sciences" listens as the conference is opened. Image credit: CEU

In the dream, a stream of urine washes away most of the feces away, but not all. Molnar's interpretation is that the leftover is the last trace of the analyst's own self-disgust.

“It should not and cannot be washed away because it relates to the self-critical bit the analyst must keep. It reminds the dreamer that he's not a mythic giant, it reminds him of the necessary disgust – that he's human, he remains human.”

Although the exhibition was closed to the public and could be viewed by invitation only, the Freud Museum had already been under attack as part of what Molnar referred to as the “Freud Wars,” during which Freud's theories and personal character were under fire. The management of the Freud Museum suffered under the chaos and a number of directors were fired after the Withers' exhibition as well as a later exhibition by performance artist Stuart Brisley (Grisly Brisley), in which one of his sculpture pieces was furniture covered in extremely life-like excrement in Freud's recreated study.

Molnar said that, behind the disgust lies a wider issue: Freud's indignation when insisting that psychoanalysis is a science. “In the Freud Wars, one of the spearheads of the attack is that it's not a science or is a forced science. What is its status? This uncertainty has been internalized by psychoanalysis themselves – professional self-disgust.”

Julia Gyimesi of Gaspar Karoli University presented after Molnar on “Hypnosis as a tool of demarcation in the history of Hungarian psychology.” She noted that research in the field of metaphysics didn't advance much in early 20th century Hungary due to Laszlo Laszlo, a fake medium who Gyimesi said was quite a dangerous individual.

Julia Gyimesi of Gaspar Karoli University talks about con artist Laszlo Laszlo and his detrimental effect on the study of metaphysics. Image credit: CEU
Julia Gyimesi of Gaspar Karoli University talks about con artist Laszlo Laszlo and his detrimental effect on the study of metaphysics. Image credit: CEU

“He was a criminal before he turned to spiritualism. He told the police that he didn't commit the crimes, that it was a demon inside him and people believed him because he was so convincing,” she said. “He convinced a number of men & women to commit suicide. He convinced them that they would do it together and it would be 'better' on the other side.”

Of course Laszlo did not follow through on his promise to kill himself along with those he convinced to take their lives. Laszlo was eventually revealed as a fraud who even created fake ectoplasm by soaking cotton in goose fat to trick those who participated in his seances.

Stephen Frosh, professor at Birkbeck College gave the keynote speech for the panel “Psychoanalysis and psy‐knowledges in (soft and hard) dictatorships.”

“The basic psychoanalytic principle of staying neutral towards the patient have inspired an attitude in many psychologists and institutions during times of repression to also stay neutral towards the outside world,” Frosh said.

According to Frosh, however, the strategy of staying neutral and apolitical rarely paid off and often led to serious moral dilemmas. He cited Sandor Ferenczi, famous Jewish-Hungarian psychologist, who wrote in one of his letters after World War I referring to the strongly anti-Semitic atmosphere that “now we will have to work in complete withdrawal, without noise.”

Stephen Frosh, professor at Birkbeck College gives his keynote speech for the panel “Psychoanalysis and psy‐knowledges in (soft and hard) dictatorships.” Image credit: CEU
Stephen Frosh, professor at Birkbeck College gives his keynote speech for the panel “Psychoanalysis and psy‐knowledges in (soft and hard) dictatorships.” Image credit: CEU

Though the Nazi propaganda labeling and condemning psychoanalysis as an inherently “Jewish intellectual product” did not permeate Hungarian society, Hungarian psychoanalysis suffered enormous losses due to the anti-Semitic laws of 1938 and the Holocaust. According to Frosh, Germany showed a rapid shift from one of the “advanced model states that apply psychoanalysis extensively for their own social good” to the Nazi state, where the Aryanized psychoanalytic institutions had but one purpose: “to keep the workers functional.”

The process triggered a debate in the German psychoanalytic society with Sigmund Freud arguing that psychoanalysis should be politically neutral. Wilhelm Reich, on the other hand, linked psychoanalysis with Marxism, believing it provided different services for the working class, and argued that Nazism would repress the working class. Author of the important psychoanalytic work “Character Analysis,” Reich was an influential psychologist in the 1930s, though his liberal views on sexuality proved to be polarizing.

Freud deemed Reich’s views dangerous and consequently Reich was expelled from the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPA).

“Getting rid of troublemakers was one of Freud’s strategies,” said Frosh.

Freud thought that if psychoanalysis stays apolitical it may convince the new German administration about its usefulness to the state. “Following the road of neutrality all they could achieve was paving the way for the Nazification of psychoanalysis,” said Frosh.

Stephen Frosh, professor at Birkbeck College talks about the rift in the Brazilian psychoanalytic society. Image credit: CEU
Stephen Frosh, professor at Birkbeck College talks about the rift in the Brazilian psychoanalytic society. Image credit: CEU

He also described how the Brazilian psychoanalytic society and its institutions split on the issue of Brazilian psychoanalyst’s Amilcar Lobo Moreira’s involvement in the tortures during the ultra-violent period of the country between 1968 and 1974. Helena Besserman Vianna who first uncovered Lobo’s involvement in tortures had to face a “systematic undermining” of her career, and it was only after the defeat of the military dictatorship, when witnesses could come forward corroborating her claims, that Lobo was suspended from the local psychoanalytic society.

Interestingly, not only Lobo, but two others psychoanalysts were also suspended, who openly talked about Lobo’s involvement in torture. The case caused a rift in the Brazilian psychoanalytic society, and though the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) intervened, the conflict was not adequately resolved.

“The IPA never tackled the issue of how psychoanalysis itself come to be connected with torture, totalitarianism and repression. They never discussed how they avoided taking a stance against it, and never questioned their so called neutral stance,” said Frosh.

For the complete conference program, visit: http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/node/3022