CHAPTER X. The Politics of Prevention

THE POLITICS OF PREVENTION

Political movements derive their vitality from the displacement of private affects upon public objects. The intensive scrutiny of the individual by psychopathological methods discloses the prime importance of hitherto-neglected motives in the determination of political traits and beliefs. The adult who is studied at any given cross-section of his career is the product of a long and gradual development in the course of which many of his motivations fail to modify according to the demands of unfolding reality. The adult is left with an impulse life which is but partially integrated to adulthood. Primitive psychological structures continue in more or less disguised form to control his thought and effort.

The state is a symbol of authority, and as such is the legatee of attitudes which have been organized in the life of the individual within the intimate interpersonal sphere of the home and friendship group. At one phase of childhood development the wisdom and might of the physical symbol of authority, typically the father, is enormously exaggerated by the child. Eder traces the significance of this for the state in the following words:

What occurs as we come more in touch with the external world, when the principle of reality develops, is the finding of surrogates for this ideal father. We discover that the parent is not all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, but we still need to find persons or abstractions upon which we can distribute these and similar attributes. By a process of fission these feelings are displaced on to and may be distributed among a number of surrogates. The surrogates may be persons, animals, things or abstract ideas; the headmaster, the dog, the rabbit, the Empire, the Aryan race, or any particular “ism.”

He comments that it is upon this self-ideal that is formed the possibility of leadership, of leaders, and of the supreme leader, who is the one capable of doing all that the child once thought the physical father could do. The unconscious motivation is reflected in the sober formula of Blackstone, “The sovereign is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing; in him is no folly or weakness.”

There is very deep meaning in the phrase of Paley’s that “a family contains the rudiments of an empire.” The family experience organizes very powerful drives in successive levels of integration, and these primitive attitudes are often called into play as the unobserved partners of rational reactions. To choose another extract from Eder:

The behaviour of the elected or representative politician betrays many characteristics derived from the family. For example, during the time I filled a political job in Palestine I noticed in myself (and in my colleagues) the satisfaction it gave me to have secret information, knowledge which must on no account be imparted to others. Of course good reasons were always to be found: the people would misuse the information or it would depress them unduly and so on--pretty exactly the parent’s attitude about imparting information, especially of a sexual nature, to the children....

At the back of secret diplomacy, and indeed the whole relationship of the official to the non-official, there rests this father-child affect. This also serves to explain the passion aroused in former days by any proposed extension of the franchise.

In the sphere of political dogma, unconscious conflicts play the same rôle which Theodor Reik discussed when he drew a parallel between religious dogma and obsessive ideas. Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but of doubt of which he is unaware. The unconscious hatred of authority discloses itself in the endless capacity of the theorist to imagine new reasons for disbelief, and in his capacity to labor over trivialities, and to reduce his whole intellectual scheme to a logical absurdity. Sometimes this appears in a cryptic formula to which some sort of mysterious potency is ascribed, but which is hopelessly contradictory in so far as it possesses any manifest meaning. The celebrated doctrine of the unity of the trinity is an instance of such culminating nonsense. Words lose their rational reference points and become packed with unconscious symbolism of the ambivalent variety. The description of sovereignty found in Blackstone refers to nothing palpable, and functions principally as an incantation. Much solemn juridical speculation, since so much of it is elaborated by obsessive thinkers, ends thus. Deep doubts about the self are displaced on to doubts about the world outside, and these doubts are sought to be allayed by ostentatious preoccupation with truth.

Defiance of authority is defiance of the introjected conscience, and involves a measure of self-punishment. We have seen how a powerful need for self-punishment is the stuff out of which martyrs and sensational failures are made; but of more general importance is the rôle of the sense of guilt in supporting the status quo. Deviation from accepted patterns becomes equivalent to sin, and the conscience visits discomforts upon those who dare to innovate. Radical ideas become “sacrilegious” and “disloyal” in the view of the primitive conscience, for they tend to represent more than a limited defiance of authority. They put the whole structure of the personality under strain. The childish conscience is easily intimidated into preserving order on slight provocation; it knows little of the capacity to consider the piecemeal reconstruction of values. “Radicalism” is felt as a challenge to the whole system of resistances which are binding down the illicit impulses of the personality, rather than as an opportunity for detached consideration of the relation of the self to the rest of reality. There is little boldness in political thinking which is not accompanied by an overdose of defiance, for even those who succeed in breaking through the intimidations of their infantile consciences must often succumb in some measure and “pay out.” Much of the struggle, the fearful Sturm und Drang of the emancipated thinker, is his unconscious tribute to the exactions of the tribunal which he erected within himself at an early age, and which continues to treat innovation as ipso facto dangerous. The non-obsessive thinker is one who can coolly contemplate revisions in the relations of man to reality unperturbed by his antiquated conscience. Often readjustments of human affairs which are proposed are driven to absurdity because the original mind is compelled to transform his mere departure from the conventional into a defiance of conventionality. When one perceives the operation of this powerful self-punishment drive, and the secondary efforts to free one’s self from feelings of guilt for defying the authorized order, it is possible to remain understandingly tolerant of the eccentricities of creative minds. To put the point a bit sharply, it is safe to say that the adult mind is only partly adult; the conscience may be four years old. The conscience, the introjected nursemaid, reacts undiscriminatingly to change, and construes it as rebellion.

The organization of motives which occurs in adolescence possesses direct significance for the interpretation of political interests.

The physical and mental storm of puberty and adolescence often culminates in the displacement of loves upon all humanity or a selected part of it, and in acts of devotion to the whole. It is here that the fundamental processes of loyalty are most clearly evident as they relate to public life. S. Bernfeld has written extensively on the psychology of the German youth movement. He comments on the very different lengths of puberty, and distinguishes between the physical and the psychological processes. When the psychological processes outlive the physical ones, certain characteristic reaction types arise. Dr. Bernfeld believes that the discrepant type prevails most characteristically in the youth movement, and he enumerates its characteristics. The interests of this group are turned toward “ideal” objects like politics, humanity, and art. The relation to these objects is productive, since the youth tries to produce a new form of politics or art. There is always a great deal of self-confidence present, or many symptoms of a repression that has failed. This is expressed in the high opinion of one’s self and the low opinion one holds of his companions. An outstanding individual, the friend or master, is loved and revered. Often this love for a friend is extended to the whole group. The sexual components of the personality do not concentrate on finding objects, but in creating a new narcissistic situation. Bernfeld distinguishes this secondary narcissism from infantile narcissism on the ground that it is accompanied by deep depression reminiscent of melancholia. The reason lies in the formation of an ideal self that attracts a great part of the libido and enters into contrast with the real ego, a process which is particularly characteristic of the complex or discrepant type which he found in the youth movement.

Political life seems to sublimate many homosexual trends. Politicians characteristically work together in little cliques and clubs, and many of them show marked difficulties in reaching a stable heterosexual adjustment. In military life, when men are thrown together under intimate conditions, the sublimations often break down and the homosexual drives find direct expression. A German general has gone so far as to declare that one reason why Germany lost the war was that the command was shot through with jealousies growing out of homosexual rivalry. Dr. K. G. Heimsoth has prepared a manuscript describing the rôle of homosexuality in the volunteer forces which continued to operate against the Poles and the communists after the war. In the case of certain leaders, at least, the reputation for overt homosexuality was no handicap; indeed, the reverse seemed to be true. Franz Alexander has suggested that one reason why homosexuality is viewed with contempt in modern life is the vague sense that complex cultural achievement depends on an inhibited sexuality, and that direct gratification tends to dissolve society into self-satisfied pairs and cliques. The observations of Heimsoth throw some doubt on the wisdom of this “vague sense.” The prominence of alcoholism and promiscuity among like-sex groups has often been observed, and both indulgences appear to be closely connected with homosexual impulses.

Political crises are complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive impulses. War is the classical situation in which the elementary psychological structures are no longer held in subordination to complex reactions. The acts of cruelty and lust which are inseparably connected with war have disclosed vividly to all who care to see the narrow margin which separates the social from the asocial nature of man. The excesses of heroism and abnegation are alike primitive in their manifestations, and show that all the primitive psychological structures are not antisocial, but asocial, and may often function on behalf of human solidarity.

Why does society become demoralized in the process of revolution? Why should a change in the political procedures of the community unleash such excesses in behavior? Reflection might lead one to suppose that since important decisions are in process of being made, calm deliberation would characterize society. Evidently a reactivating process is at work here; there is a regressive tendency to reawaken primitive sadism and lust. The conspicuous disproportionality between the problem and the behavior necessitates an explanation in such terms. Federn published a sketch of the psychology of revolution in his pamphlet Die vaterlose Gesellschaft in 1919. When the ruler falls, the unconscious triumphantly interprets this as a release from all constraint, and the individuals in the community who possess the least solidified personality structures are compulsively driven to acts of theft and violence. An interview which Federn gave to Edgar Ansel Mowrer in 1927 on the occasion of the Vienna riots reviews in somewhat popular form some of his conceptions.

Vienna, Austria, July 20.--“Distrust of father was the chief cause of the Vienna riot,” said Paul Federn, onetime president of the Psychoanalytical Society. From a psychoanalytical standpoint all authority is the father, and this formerly for Austria was incorporated in the imposing figure of Emperor Franz Josef. But during the war the father deceived and maltreated his children, and only the material preoccupations of life and the joyous outburst when at the close of the war the old authority broke asunder prevented Austria from having a revolution then.

The state again built up the old ruling caste and began to hope for restoration, and therefore an abyss opened between Vienna, which under socialist leadership is trying to replace the traditional father principle by a new brotherhood, and the Austrian federal state, which had returned to a modified father idea. Trust in father is the child’s deepest instinct. Vienna first respected the Austrian republic, but gradually this belief was undermined by the continual misery, by newspapers preaching fanaticism and by legal decisions which virtually destroyed the people’s belief in the new father’s justice.

Accordingly there occurred a spontaneous manifestation which unconsciously drove the disillusioned and furious children to destroy precisely those things on which the paternal authority seems to rest--namely, records and legal documents.

Why the peaceful Viennese should suddenly be transformed temporarily into mad beasts is also clear to the psychoanalysts. Had the police offered no resistance the crowd would soon have dispersed and no harm would have been done. But once the police fired blood flowed and the mob reacted savagely, responding to the ancient fear of castration by the father which is present in all of us unconsciously in the face of the punishing authority. Therefore, fear grew along with the violence, each increase leading to new violence and greater fear, as appeasement can only follow a complete outbreak and as the inhabitants were widely scattered in their houses it took three days before the last hatred could fully get out.

One further point can only be explained by psychoanalysis. The social democratic leaders are at heart revolutionary, but they did not wish this demonstration. They realized that revolution in little Austria today would be suicidal, and, therefore, at a given moment called out the republican guard with orders to interfere and prevent violence. The guard arrived much too late.

Why did not the leaders send out the guard at 6 a.m. when they knew the demonstration was beginning? They say they “forgot.” This is a flagrant example of unconscious forgetfulness. The socialists forgot to take the only step which could have prevented something which they consciously disapproved, but unconsciously desired.

The Vienna riots were in the deepest sense a family row.

Eder speculates about the unconscious factors in the well-known tendency of certain political alternatives to succeed one another in crude pendulum fashion.

I think it was Mr. Zangwill who once said that it is a principle of the British Constitution that the King can do no wrong and his ministers no right. That is to say, the ambivalency originally experienced toward the father is now split; the sentiment of disloyalty, etc., is displaced on to the King’s ministers, or on to some of them, or on to the opposition.... Modern society has discovered the principle of election, and the vote to give expression to the hostile feelings toward their rulers. Psychoanalytically an election may be regarded as the sublimation of regicide (primary parricide) with the object of placing oneself on the throne; the vote is like a repeating decimal; the father is killed but never dies. The ministers are our substitutes for ourselves. Hence the political maxim of the swing of the pendulum.

Alexander and Staub have undertaken to explain the unconscious basis of the crisis which is produced in the community when criminals are permitted to go with no punishment or with light punishment. The study of personality genesis shows that the sublimation of primitive impulses is possible on the basis of a kind of primitive “social contract.” The individual foregoes direct indulgences (which have the disadvantage of bringing him into conflict with authority), and substitutes more complex patterns of behavior on the tacit understanding that love and safety will thereby be insured. When another individual breaks over and gratifies his illicit impulses directly on a primitive level, the equilibrium of every personality is threatened. The conscious self perceives that it is possible to “get by,” and this threatens the whole structure of sublimation. The superego tries to maintain order by directing energy against the ego, perhaps subjecting it to “pricks of conscience,” for so much as entertaining the possibility of illicit gratification, and seeks to turn the ego toward activities which reduce temptation. This may involve the reconstruction of the environment by seeking to eliminate the “non-ideal” elements in it, and may be exemplified in the panicky demand for the annihilation of the outsider (who is a criminal) for the sake of keeping the chains on the insider (who is a criminal). Every criminal is a threat to the whole social order since he reinstates with more or less success an acute conflict within the lives of all members of society. The success of the superego depends upon imposing certain ways of interpreting reality upon the self. When reality grossly refuses to conform to the “ideal,” the energies of the self are divided, and an acute crisis supervenes. The superego undertakes to reinforce its side of the contradictory ego trends by punishing the ego, and by forcing the projection of this situation upon the outer world. Certain aspects of the outer world become “bad” because they are connected in private experience with the pangs inflicted by the taskmaster within, the conscience. A strong conscience may enforce this “distortion” of reality upon the self to such a degree that the self acts on quite fantastic assumptions about reality. These are most acutely manifested in such phenomena as confusion states, hallucinations, and delusions, all of which are forms of deformed reality. When reality becomes “ominous,” violent efforts to change may appear futile, and safety is sought in physical flight, or in physical passivity and autistic preoccupation. Since our conceptions of reality are based upon little “first-hand” experience of the world about us, the superego usually has a rather easy time of it.

Political movements, then, derive their vitality from the displacement of private affects upon public objects, and political crises are complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive motives. Just how does it happen that the private and primitive drives find their way to political symbols? What are the circumstances which favor the selection of political targets of displacement?

Political life is carried on with symbols of the whole. Politics has to do with collective processes and public acts, and so intricate are these processes that with the best of intentions, it is extremely difficult to establish an unambiguous relationship between the symbols of the whole and the processes which they are presumed to designate. To the common run of mankind the reference points of political symbols are remote from daily experience, though they are rendered familiar through constant reiteration. This ambiguity of reference, combined with universality of use, renders the words which signify parties, classes, nations, institutions, policies, and modes of political participation readily available for the displacement of private affects. The manifest, rational differences of opinion become complicated by the play of private motives until the symbol is nothing but a focus for the cumulation of irrelevancies. Since the dialectic of politics is conducted in terms of the whole, the private motives are readily rationalized in terms of collective advantage.

Politics, moreover, is the sphere of conflict, and brings out all the vanity and venom, the narcissism and aggression, of the contending parties. It is becoming something of a commonplace that politics is the arena of the irrational. But a more accurate description would be that politics is the process by which the irrational bases of society are brought out into the open. So long as the moral order functions with spontaneous smoothness, there is no questioning the justification of prevailing values. But when the moral order has been devalued and called into question, a sincere and general effort may be made to find a reflectively defensible solution of the resulting conflict. Politics seems to be irrational because it is the only phase of collective life in which society tries to be rational. Its very existence shows that the moral order, with all its irrational and non-rational sanctions, is no longer accepted without a challenge. A political difference is the outcome of a moral crisis, and it terminates in a new moral consensus. Politics is the transition between one unchallenged consensus and the next. It begins in conflict and eventuates in a solution. But the solution is not the “rationally best” solution, but the emotionally satisfactory one. The rational and dialectical phases of politics are subsidiary to the process of redefining an emotional consensus.

Although the dynamic of politics is to be sought in the tension level of the individuals in society, it is to be taken for granted that all individual tensions are not removed by political symbolization and exertion. When Y hits a foreman in the jaw whom he imagines has insulted him, Y is relieving his tensions. But if the act is construed by him as a personal affair with the foreman, the act is not political. Political acts are joint acts; they depend upon emotional bonds.

Now people who act together get emotionally bound together. This process of becoming emotionally bound is dependent on no conscious process. Freud said that he was made clearly aware of the emotional factor in human relations by observing that those who work together extend their contact to dining and relaxing together. Those with whom we work are endowed with rich meanings on the basis of our past experience with human beings. Since all of our motives are going concerns within the personality, our libido is more or less concentrated upon those with whom we come in touch. This reinforces the perception of similarities, and supplies the dynamic for the identification process. Even the negative identification is a tribute to the extent to which the affective resources of the personality become mobilized in human contact.

People who are emotionally bound together are not yet involved in a political movement. Politics begins when they achieve a symbolic definition of themselves in relation to demands upon the world. The pre-political phase of the labor movement as sketched by Nexo in his Pelle the Conqueror is an able characterization of what the facts may be. The workers had plenty of grievances against their employers, but individuals took it out in sporadic acts of violence, and in frequent debauchery. It was not until a new “set” of mind was achieved with the appearance of socialist symbols, and their adoption, that the tension found an outlet in political form. When J hits a foreman on the jaw because the foreman swore at him, J is not acting for the working classes; but after J becomes a socialist, his acts are symbolically significant of the expanded personality which he possesses. Acts cease to be merely private acts; they have become related to remote social objects. The conception of the self has new points of reference, and points of reference which interlock with those of others.

It is of the utmost importance to political science to examine in detail, not only the factors which contribute to the raising and lowering of the tension level, but the processes of symbolization. In regard to the former aspect of the problem, data will have to be taken from specialists of many kinds, but in regard to the latter problem, the student can come into ready contact with the raw material. The stock in trade of realistic politics is the analysis of the history of “pressure groups,” ranging from such associations as the Fabian Society through political parties to conspirative organizations. What are the conditions under which the idea is itself invented, and what are the conditions of its propagation? That is to say: What are the laws of symbolization in political activity?

I wish to call attention to certain possibilities. Several social movements will be found which represent a desire on the part of an intimate circle to perpetuate their relationship at the expense of society. It is worth remembering that Loyola and the other young men who founded the Jesuits were in long friendly relationship before they hit upon their famous project. Not only that: they were anxious to remain in some sort of personal relation through life, and they invented many expedients before they hit on the final one. What we had here was a friendly group which desired to preserve their personal connections before they knew how they could actually do it. It is less true to say that institutions are the lengthened shadow of a great man than that they are the residue of a friendly few.

Other social movements will be found to have adopted their project from a lone thinker with whom they have no direct connection. The process here is that one member of the group, with whom the others are identified, is impressed by the scheme, and interprets and defends it to the others. He gets a hearing because of his emotional claim on the others, and he may whip the doubters and waverers into line by wheedling or by threatening to withdraw affection.

The formation of a radiating nucleus for an idea is especially common among adolescents, and among those who function best in single-sex groups. Thrasher has described gangs which had a mission in his book on The Gang, and the literature of youth study is full of instances of two’s, three’s and quartettes which have sworn undying fealty to one another, and to a project of social reform. When the idea is embraced later in life it not infrequently appears among those who have shown pronounced evidence of emotional maladjustment. Much social and political life is a symptom of the delayed adolescence of its propagators, which is, of course, no necessary criticism of its content.

The psychology of personal, oratorical, and printed persuasion by means of which support is won for particular symbols has yet to be written. William I. Thomas long ago commented on the quasi-sexual approach of the revivalist to the audience. Some orators are of an intimate, sympathetic, pleading type, and resemble the attempts made by some males to overcome the shyness of the female. Other orators fit into the feared yet revered father-pattern; others are clowns who amuse by releasing much repressed material; others address the socially adjusted and disciplined level of the personality. Thus the relationship between the speaker and the audience has its powerful emotional aspects, which are not yet adequately explored. There are some who excel in face-to-face relations, but who make a poor showing out on the platform.

The processes of symbolization can be studied with particular ease when widespread and disturbing changes occur in the life-situation of many members of society. Famine, pestilence, unemployment, high living costs, and a catalogue of other disturbances may simultaneously produce adjustment problems for many people. One of the first results is to release affects from their previous objects, and to create a state of susceptibility to proposals. All sorts of symbols are ready, or readily invented, to refix the mobile affects. “Take it to the Lord in prayer,” “Vote socialist,” “Down with the Jews,” “Restore pep with pepsin,” “Try your luck on the horses”--all sorts of alternatives become available. The prescriptions are tied up with diagnoses, and the diagnoses in turn imply prescriptions. “A sinful world,” “Wall Street,” “a collapse in the foreign market”--all sorts of diagnoses float about, steadily defining and redefining the situation for the individuals affected. Political symbols must compete with symbols from every sphere of life, and an interesting inquiry could be made into the relative polarizing power of political and other forms of social symbolism. Certainly the modern world expects to fire the health commissioner rather than burn a witch when the plague breaks out.

The competition among symbols to serve as foci of concentration for the aroused emotions of the community leads to the survival of a small number of master-symbols. The mobilization of the community for action demands economy in the terms in which objectives are put. The agitation for the control of the liquor traffic passed through many phases in America until finally legal prohibition became the chief dividing-line. To prohibit or not to prohibit grew into the overmastering dichotomy of public thought.

Symbolization thus necessitates dichotomization. The program of social action must be couched in “yes” and “no” form if decision is to be possible. The problem of he who would manipulate the concentration of affect about a particular symbol is to reinforce its competitive power by leading as many elements as possible in society to read their private meanings into it. This reinforcement and facilitation of the symbol involves the use of men of prestige in its advocacy, the assimilation of special economic and other group aims, and the invention of appeals to unconscious drives. Propaganda on behalf of a symbol can become a powerful factor in social development because of the flexibility in the displacement of emotion from one set of symbols to another. There is always a rather considerable reservoir of unrest and discontent in society, and there is nothing absolutely fixed and predestined about the particular symbol which will have attracting power.

The analysis of motives which are unconscious for most people, though widespread, gives the propagandist a clue to certain nearly universal forms of appeal. The moving pictures which have been produced by the communist government in Russia are often remarkable examples of the use of symbols which not only have their conscious affective dimension, but which mobilize deep unconscious impulses. In one film, for instance, it is the mother who suffers under tsarism and fans the flames of revolt. Analysis has disclosed the general, and presumably universal, meaning of the attachment to the land. The boy-child’s wish for union with the mother, for all-embracing care and protection, undergoes some measure of sublimation in social life. Eder remarks that it finds expression in attachment to the earth, the land, the mother-country, home. The Heimweh of the Swiss, the pious Jew’s desire for burial in Palestine, and a host of similar manifestations are instances of this emotional tie whose significance for state loyalty is large.

At first sight it might appear questionable that political science can ever profit from the disclosure of motives which are supposed to operate in the unconscious of every human being. If these motives are equally operative, how can they throw any light on differences in political behavior? And are we not able to point to conditions of a more localized and definite nature which suitably explain why the Republican party loses out when the farmer loses his crops? Or why there is revolution in 1918 and not in 1925?

The mere fact that motives are more or less universal does not mean that they are always activated with the same intensity. They may block one another, until some exciting condition disturbs the adjustment and releases stores of energy. Indeed, the exploration of unconscious motivation lays the basis for the understanding of the well-known disproportionality between responses and immediate stimuli, a disproportionality which has been the subject of much puzzled and satiric comment. Farmers do vote against the Republicans when the crops fail through adverse weather conditions, although reflection would tend to minimize the possibility that the party in power exercises much authority over the weather. Oversights in personal relations which seem very slight do actually give rise to huge affective reactions. The clue to the magnitude of this notorious disproportionality is to be found in the nature of the deeper (earlier) psychological structures of the individual. By the intensive analysis of representative people, it is possible to obtain clues to the nature of these “unseen forces,” and to devise ways and means of dealing with them for the accomplishment of social purposes.

Modern democratic society is accustomed to the settlement of differences in discussion and in voting. This is a special form of politics, for differences may also be settled with a minimum of discussion and a maximum of coercion. In its modern manifestation, democracy and representative government have enthroned “government by discussion,” that is, “government by public opinion.” President Lowell some time ago pointed out that public opinion could only be said to exist where constitutional principles were agreed upon. Differences must be treated as defined within an area of agreement. Democratic and representative institutions presuppose the existence of the public which is made up of all those who follow affairs and expect to determine policy in discussion and by measures short of coercion. The public has a common focus of attention, a consensus on constitutional principles, and a zone of tolerance for conflicting demands respecting social policy.

When debate is admissible, some standards of right are tacitly admitted to be uncertain. The zone of the debatable is not fixed and immutable, but flexible and shifting. Questions rise and debate proceeds; and presently the resulting solution is no longer discussible. It has become sanctified by all the sentiments which buttress the moral order, and any challenge is met by the unanimous and spontaneous action of the community in its defense. In the presence of a challenge, the public may be dissolved into a crowd, by which is meant a group whose members are emotionally aroused and intolerant of dissent.

What light does the study of the genesis of personality throw on the factors which determine which symbols are debatable? What is the mechanism of the process by which the moral patterns are broken up, discussed, and eventually reincorporated in more or less modified form into the moral consensus of the community?

The growth of emotional bonds among individuals of diverse cultural and personal traits is the most powerful solvent of the moral order. A valuable treatise could be constructed on the theme, “Friendship versus Morality.” It is well-known that governments are continually handicapped in the impersonal application of a rule by the play of personal loyalties. Robert E. Park has stressed the importance of curiosity in the field of interracial relations. In no small measure this is very primitive curiosity about the sexual structure and behavior of odd-looking folks. When personal ties are built up, exceptions are made in favor of the friend; what, indeed, is the constitution among friends?

The mechanism is clear by which issues once settled are presently non-debatable. Growing individuals incorporate the end result into their own personalities through the process of identification and introjection. Once a part of the superego of the rising generation, the moral consensus is complete. Where no dissent is tolerated and dialectic is impossible, we are dealing with a superego phenomenon. Certain symbols are sacrosanct, and aspersions upon them produce the crowd mind and not the public.

Even this brief sketch of political symbolization has shown ample grounds for concluding that political demands probably bear but a limited relevance to social needs. The political symbol becomes ladened with the residue of successive positive and negative identifications, and with the emotional charge of displaced private motives. This accumulation of irrelevancy usually signifies that tension exists in the lives of many people, and it may possess a diagnostic value to the objective investigator. The individual who is sorely divided against himself may seek peace by unifying himself against an outsider. This is the well-known “peacefulness of being at war.” But the permanent removal of the tensions of the personality may depend upon the reconstruction of the individual’s view of the world, and not upon belligerent crusades to change the world.

The democratic state depends upon the technique of discussion to relieve the strains of adjustment to a changing world. If the analysis of the individual discloses the probable irrelevance of what the person demands to what he needs (i.e., to that which will produce a permanent relief of strain), serious doubt is cast upon the efficacy of the technique of discussion as a means of handling social problems.

The premise of democracy is that each man is the best judge of his own interest, and that all whose interests are affected should be consulted in the determination of policy. Thus the procedure of a democratic society is to clear the way to the presentation of various demands by interested parties, leaving the coast clear for bargain and compromise, or for creative invention and integration.

The findings of personality research show that the individual is a poor judge of his own interest. The individual who chooses a political policy as a symbol of his wants is usually trying to relieve his own disorders by irrelevant palliatives. An examination of the total state of the person will frequently show that his theory of his own interests is far removed from the course of procedure which will give him a happy and well-adjusted life. Human behavior toward remote social objects, familiarity with which is beyond the personal experience of but a few, is especially likely to be a symptomatic rather than a healthy and reflective adjustment.

In a sense politics proceeds by the creation of fictitious values. The person who is solicited to testify to his own interest is stimulated by the problem put to him to commit himself. The terms in which he couches his own interest vary according to a multitude of factors, but whatever the conditioning influences may be, the resulting theory of his interest becomes invested with his own narcissism. The political symbol is presumably an instrumental makeshift toward the advancement of the other values of the personality; but it very quickly ceases to be an instrumental value, and becomes a terminal value, no longer the servant but the coequal, or indeed the master. Thus the human animal distinguishes himself by his infinite capacity for making ends of his means.

It should not be hastily assumed that because a particular set of controversies passes out of the public mind that the implied problems were solved in any fundamental sense. Quite often the solution is a magical solution which changes nothing in the conditions affecting the tension level of the community, and which merely permits the community to distract its attention to another set of equally irrelevant symbols. The number of statutes which pass the legislature, or the number of decrees which are handed down by the executive, but which change nothing in the permanent practices of society, is a rough index of the rôle of magic in politics.

In some measure, of course, discontent is relieved in the very process of agitating, discussing, and legislating about social changes which in the end are not substantially affected. Political symbolization has its catharsis function, and consumes the energies which are released by the maladaptations of individuals to one another.

But discussion often leads to modifications in social practice which complicate social problems. About all that can be said for various punitive measures resorted to by the community is that they have presently broken down and ceased to continue the damage which they began to inflict on society.

Generalizing broadly, political methods have historically been of three kinds: the method of violence, of exhortation, and of discussion. All these methods have the common characteristic that they are to be applied in the settlement of conflicting demands, and not in the obviation of conflict. In so far as they rest upon a philosophy, they identify the problem of politics with the problem of coping with differences which are sharply drawn.

The identification of the field of politics with the field of battle, whether the theater be the frontier or the forum, has produced an unfortunate warp in the minds of those who manage affairs, or those who simply think about the management of affairs. The contribution of politics has been thought to be in the elaboration of the methods by which conflicts are resolved. This has produced a vast diversion of energy toward the study of the formal etiquette of government. In some vague way, the problem of politics is the advancement of the good life, but this is at once assumed to depend upon the modification of the mechanisms of government. Democratic theorists in particular have hastily assumed that social harmony depends upon discussion, and that discussion depends upon the formal consultation of all those affected by social policies.

The time has come to abandon the assumption that the problem of politics is the problem of promoting discussion among all the interests concerned in a given problem. Discussion frequently complicates social difficulties, for the discussion by far-flung interests arouses a psychology of conflict which produces obstructive, fictitious, and irrelevant values. The problem of politics is less to solve conflicts than to prevent them; less to serve as a safety valve for social protest than to apply social energy to the abolition of recurrent sources of strain in society.

This redefinition of the problem of politics may be called the idea of preventive politics. The politics of prevention draws attention squarely to the central problem of reducing the level of strain and maladaptation in society. In some measure it will proceed by encouraging discussion among all those who are affected by social policy, but this will be no iron-clad rule. In some measure it will proceed by improving the machinery of settling disputes, but this will be subordinated to a comprehensive program, and no longer treated as an especially desirable mode of handling the situation.

The recognition that people are poor judges of their own interest is often supposed to lead to the conclusion that a dictator is essential. But no student of individual psychology can fail to share the conviction of Kempf that “Society is not safe.... when it is forced to follow the dictations of one individual, of one autonomic apparatus, no matter how splendidly and altruistically it may be conditioned.” Our thinking has too long been misled by the threadbare terminology of democracy versus dictatorship, of democracy versus aristocracy. Our problem is to be ruled by the truth about the conditions of harmonious human relations, and the discovery of the truth is an object of specialized research; it is no monopoly of people as people, or of the ruler as ruler. As our devices of accurate ascertainment are invented and spread, they are explained and applied by many individuals inside the social order. Knowledge of this kind is a slow and laborious accumulation.

The politics of prevention does not depend upon a series of changes in the organization of government. It depends upon a reorientation in the minds of those who think about society around the central problems: What are the principal factors which modify the tension level of the community? What is the specific relevance of a proposed line of action to the temporary and permanent modification of the tension level?

The politics of prevention will insist upon a rigorous audit of the human consequences of prevailing political practices. How does politics affect politicians? One way to consider the human value of social action is to see what that form of social action does to the actors. When a judge has been on the bench thirty years, what manner of man has he become? When an agitator has been agitating for thirty years, what has happened to him? How do different kinds of political administrators compare with doctors, musicians, and scientists? Such a set of inquiries would presuppose that we were able to ascertain the traits with which the various individuals began to practice their rôle in society. Were we able to show what certain lines of human endeavor did to the same reactive type, we would lay the foundation for a profound change in society’s esteem for various occupations.

Any audit of the human significance of politics would have to press far beyond the narrow circle of professional politicians. Crises like wars, revolutions, and elections enter the lives of people in far-reaching ways. The effect of crises on mental attitude is an important and uncertain field. Thus it is reported that during the rebellion of 1745-46 in Scotland there was little hysteria (in the technical pathological sense). The same was true of the French Revolution and of the Irish Rebellion. Rush reported in his book On the Influence of the American Revolution on the Human Body that many hysterical women were “restored to perfect health by the events of the time.” Havelock Ellis, who cites these instances, comments that “in such cases the emotional tension is given an opportunity for explosion in new and impersonal channels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is broken.”

The physical consequences of political symbolism may be made the topic of investigation from this point of view:

When the affect can not acquire what it needs, uncomfortable tensions or anxiety (fear) are felt, and the use of the symbol or fetish, relieving this anxiety, has a marked physiological value in that it prevents the adrenal, thyroid, circulatory, hepatic and pulmonic compensatory strivings from becoming excessive.

Political programs will continually demand reconsideration in the light of the factors which current research discloses as bearing upon the tension level. Franz Alexander recently drew attention to the strains produced in modern civilization by the growing sphere of purposive action. He summed up the facts in the process of civilized development in the following way: “Human expressions of instinct are subject to a continual tendency to rationalization, that is, they develop more and more from playful, uncoordinated, purely pleasure efforts into purposive actions.” The “discomfort of civilization” of which Freud recently wrote in the Unbehagen der Kultur is characteristic of the rationalized cultures with which we are acquainted. Life is poor in libidinal gratifications of the primitive kind which the peasant, who is in close touch with elementary things, is in a position to enjoy. Modern life furnishes irrational outlets in the moving picture and in sensational crime news. But it may be that other means of relieving the strain of modern living can be invented which will have fewer drawbacks.

Preventive politics will search for the definite assessment, then, of cultural patterns in terms of their human consequences. Some of these human results will be deplored as “pathological,” while others will be welcomed as “healthy.” One complicating factor is that valuable contributions to culture are often made by men who are in other respects pathological. Many pathological persons are constrained by their personal difficulties to displace more or less successfully upon remote problems, and to achieve valuable contributions to knowledge and social policy. Of course the notion of the pathological is itself full of ambiguities. The individual who is subject to epileptic seizures may be considered in one culture not a subnormal and diseased person, but a supernormal person. Indeed, it may be said that society depends upon a certain amount of pathology, in the sense that society does not encourage the free criticism of social life, but establishes taboos upon reflective thinking about its own presuppositions. If the individual is pathological to the extent that he is unable to contemplate any fact with equanimity, and to elaborate impulse through the processes of thought, it is obvious that society does much to nurture disease. This leads to the apparent paradox that successful social adjustment consists in contracting the current diseases. If “health” merely means a statistical report upon the “average,” the scrutiny of the individual ceases to carry much meaning for the modification of social patterns. But if “health” means something more than “average,” the intensive study of individuals gives us a vantage ground for the revaluation of the human consequences of cultural patterns, and the criticism of these patterns.

If the politics of prevention spreads in society, a different type of education will become necessary for those who administer society or think about it. This education will start from the proposition that it takes longer to train a good social scientist than it takes to train a good physical scientist. The social administrator and social scientist must be brought into direct contact with his material in its most varied manifestations. He must mix with rich and poor, with savage and civilized, with sick and well, with old and young. His contacts must be primary and not exclusively secondary. He must have an opportunity for prolonged self-scrutiny by the best-developed methods of personality study, and he must laboriously achieve a capacity to deal objectively with himself and with all others in human society.

This complicated experience is necessary since our scale of values is less the outcome of our dialectical than of our other experiences in life. Values change more by the unconscious redefinition of meaning than by rational analysis. Every contact and every procedure which discloses new facts has its repercussions upon the matrix of partially verbalized experience, which is the seeding ground of conscious ideas.

One peculiarity of the problem of the social scientist is that he must establish personal contact with his material. The physical scientist who works in a laboratory spends more time adjusting his machinery than in making his observations, and the social scientist who works in the field must spend more time establishing contacts than in noting and reporting observations. What the instrumentation technique is to the physicist, the cultivation of favorable human points of vantage is for most social scientists. This means that the student of society, as well as the manager of social relations, must acquire the technique of social intercourse in unusual degree, unless he is to suffer from serious handicaps, and his training must be directed with this in mind.

The experience of the administrator-investigator must include some definite familiarity with all the elements which bear importantly upon the traits and interests of the individual. This means that he must have the most relevant material brought to his attention from the fields of psychology, psychopathology, physiology, medicine, and social science. Since our institutions of higher learning are poorly organized at the present time to handle this program, thorough curricular reconstructions will be indispensable.

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What has been said in this chapter may be passed in brief review. Political movements derive their vitality from the displacement of private affects upon public objects. Political crises are complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive motives which were organized in the early experience of the individuals concerned. Political symbols are particularly adapted to serve as targets for displaced affect because of their ambiguity of reference, in relation to individual experience, and because of their general circulation. Although the dynamic of politics is the tension level of individuals, all tension does not produce political acts. Nor do all emotional bonds lead to political action. Political acts depend upon the symbolization of the discontent of the individual in terms of a more inclusive self which champions a set of demands for social action.

Political demands are of limited relevance to the changes which will produce permanent reductions in the tension level of society. The political methods of coercion, exhortation, and discussion assume that the rôle of politics is to solve conflicts when they have happened. The ideal of a politics of prevention is to obviate conflict by the definite reduction of the tension level of society by effective methods, of which discussion will be but one. The preventive point of view insists upon a continuing audit of the human consequences of social acts, and especially of political acts. The achievement of the ideal of preventive politics depends less upon changes in social organization than upon improving the methods and the education of social administrators and social scientists.

The preventive politics of the future will be intimately allied to general medicine, psychopathology, physiological psychology, and related disciplines. Its practitioners will gradually win respect in society among puzzled people who feel their responsibilities and who respect objective findings. A comprehensive functional conception of political life will state problems of investigation, and keep receptive the minds of those who reflect at length upon the state.