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NOTES AND DISCUSSION

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND
CIVILIZATIONAL ANALYSIS:
PRELIMINARIES TO A DEBATE

Johann P. Arnason

Civilizational analysis – the term is used here in the specific sense

defined by the idea of civilizations in the plural – and psychoanalysis have
not, on the whole, taken much notice of each other.1 But some implicit points
of contact are easy to locate. Most obviously, the two lines of inquiry are
bound to meet on the anthropological level. If we analyze the most durable
and distinctive civilizational patterns as definitions of the human condition
(it is the merit of Jaroslav Krejčí to have stated this view more forcefully than
any other civilizational theorist, even if his specific formulations can be ques-
tioned2), there is a clear case for dialogue with psychoanalytical theory: no
interpretation of the Freudian project as a whole can ignore its bearings on
philosophical anthropology, but it remains a matter of debate whether its
strong emphasis on invariant meta-historical factors is or could be qualified
by new perspectives on human diversity.
On the other hand, the internal controversies and changing fortunes of
the psychoanalytical movement might be seen as sufficient reasons to
suspend the question of substantive insights, and to consider psychoanalysis
itself as a civilizational phenomenon. Further discussion from that point of
view could begin with the extraordinary resonance of Freud’s ideas in the
broader context of 20th-century thought. Freud’s own claim to have com-
pleted a scientific revision of the human self-image, initiated by the Coper-
nican revolution, is a clear indicator of the cultural shift which the new
discipline was meant to bring about. When a widely read popularizing

Thesis Eleven, Number 71, November 2002: 71–92

SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Pty Ltd
[0725-5136(200211)71;71–92;028126]
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72 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

account of world history describes Freud as a man who ‘deserves in the

history of culture a place beside Newton or Darwin’ (Roberts, 1980: 879), it
is obviously taken for granted that his achievements match his ambitions.
Another variation on the theme of psychoanalytical enlightenment proposes
a theory of religious evolution, leading from Catholicism through Protes-
tantism to psychoanalysis ‘which is not a religion at all, but remains in im-
portant respects formally comparable to one’ (Badcock, 1980: 245), and
concludes with the following statement:
Certainly, it is my belief that if psychoanalysis ceased to be merely a depart-
ment of modern medicine and became instead a system of education and the
basis of culture, the universal neurosis which we call ‘civilization’ would have
been largely resolved and the psychoanalysis of man would have been brought
to a provisional, but successful conclusion. (Badcock, 1980: 253)

But the recent backlash against psychoanalytical ideas and ambitions, most
spectacularly visible in connection with the American ‘memory wars’ (Crews
et al., 1995), must also be seen as a symptom of broader and deeper cultural
currents. Anti-Freudian crusaders like to present their arguments as scientific
objections to anti-scientific myth-making, but their own preconceptions and
selective perceptions of Freud’s work are too obvious for such claims to carry
conviction (for a critical survey of recent attacks on Freud, see Michels, 1997).
One of the most articulate and undogmatic defenders of the psychoanalyti-
cal tradition suggests that in the last instance, the quarrel is about ‘two very
different images of what humans must be like if democracy is to be a viable
form of government’, and that Freud – continuing a tradition that goes back
to Greek tragedy and philosophy – poses a challenge to the now prevalent
conception of human individuals as ‘preference-expressing political atoms’.
On this view, the psychoanalytical ‘recognition of a dark strain running
through the human soul’ helps to understand ‘how one might both take
humanity seriously and participate in a democratic ideal’ (Lear, 1998: 28–31).
No Freudian (not to mention Lacanian) orthodoxy is needed to justify accept-
ance of the ‘need to maintain a certain humility in the face of meanings which
remain opaque to human reason’ (Lear, 1998: 30), and of the claim that
psychoanalysis should at least be given credit for some attempts to translate
that humility into responsible engagement.
Even if we discount both over-enthusiastic projections and ideologically
motivated rejections, the psychoanalytical problematic can still be related to
broader horizons of modern European thought and culture. Freud’s work has
been interpreted as a turning-point in a much longer history of the gradual
discovery of the unconscious (Ellenberger, 1970). More controversially, Odo
Marquard (1987) argues that the basic concepts and assumptions of psycho-
analysis reflect the ‘aporetical situation’ of modern philosophy, characterized
by undecidable disputes between transcendental, metaphysical and historical
approaches. Within this field of self-perpetuating interpretive conflicts,
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 73

psychoanalysis appears as a ‘disenchanted’ offshoot of the philosophy of

nature, a reactivated version of the psychologism that continues to threaten
transcendental philosophy from within, and a non-historical philosophy of
history. Marquard’s work is one of the two most ambitious attempts to situate
psychoanalysis in the context of long-term philosophical trends and debates
(the other is Paul Ricoeur’s Freud and Philosophy), but it seems to be
unknown in the English-speaking world. It would be an excellent antidote to
the disastrously unbalanced rediscoveries of philosophy through Lacanian trap
doors; but it is only indirectly relevant to the present topic. Together with the
other echoes and responses mentioned above, the references to main currents
of intellectual history suggest – even if there is no explicit civilizational con-
nection – that it might be useful to think of psychoanalysis as a significant
episode in the ongoing self-thematization of modern European civilization.
Finally, there is a more conditional connection that can only be claimed
if both sides – psychoanalysis and civilizational analysis – are approached
from a hermeneutical angle. Such views are anything but self-evident for the
practitioners and authorized representatives of psychoanalysis, but they have
been defended by philosophical interpreters. Paul Ricoeur (1970) saw Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud as three master thinkers of a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’,
aiming at the demystification of manifest meanings through reductionist
critique, and contrasted this common denominator with a ‘hermeneutics of
recollection’, exemplified by the phenomenology of religions and interested
in deciphering the meaning of myths and symbols. Psychoanalysis may be
seen as the most radical version of the hermeneutics of suspicion, at least in
the sense that its critical perspectives have the most unsettling implications
for the self-understanding of the human subject. In that capacity, it is doubly
crucial to Ricoeur’s project: it contrasts most sharply with the other hermeneu-
tics that seeks deeper understanding rather than critical demystification of tra-
ditions, but it also seems most suited to the demolition of idols which Ricoeur
accepts as a necessary complement to the interpretation of symbols. As for
civilizational analysis, none of the pioneering projects in this field includes
any systematic discussion of hermeneutical premises or intentions. But if the
comparative analysis of civilizations begins with constitutive cultural patterns,
it is inseparable from intercultural hermeneutics of the kind that aims at
mutual (but necessarily incomplete) elucidation, rather than a reduction to
common foundations. If the civilizational perspective is, at the same time,
opposed to cultural determinism and compatible with changing patterns of
interconnections between cultural, political and economic structures, it will
by the same token allow for critical analysis of meanings in social contexts.
It would thus open up a new field for the combination and confrontation of
the two hermeneutics. Earlier ways of demarcating their respective concerns
and logics might have to be re-examined in light of this expanding horizon.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the above questions has ever
been explicitly posed as such by psychoanalytical theorists. This is not to
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74 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

suggest that indirect connections are of no importance. Reflections on cultural

diversity from a psychoanalytical perspective are often relevant to the more
specific questions of civilizational analysis; in less obvious ways, attempts to
clarify the cognitive status and cultural role of psychoanalysis can often be
shown to have some bearing on its civilizational significance – as indicated
above – as well as on the broadly understood problem of hermeneutical
premises. But the following discussion will not deal with the wide range of
sources that could be used for these purposes. Its focus is more narrowly
defined, and the specific cases to be considered are on the civilizational side
of the potential dialogue (or, as in the last section, easily adaptable to that
point of view). First, however, a few words should be said about obstacles
to contact between the two modes of inquiry: the inbuilt blockages that have
made the psychoanalytical tradition reluctant and ill-equipped to pose the
question of cultural pluralism in any radical sense. Since civilizational analysis
is, by definition, concerned with cultural patterns of the most comprehen-
sive and mutually contrasting kind, these limitations are most visible in
relation to its problematic. They are best exemplified by a classic psychoan-
alytical account of cultural development as a unitary process.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISTINCTIONS

Freud’s most sweeping statement on the human condition does not dis-
tinguish between culture and civilization. The original title of Civilization and
its Discontents refers to culture, and Kulturentwicklung is Freud’s preferred
term for the global process which he proposes to analyze. The English trans-
lation uses both terms without any sense of possible divergences: ‘civiliz-
ation’ is used in the title and most frequently in the text, but the literal
translation ‘cultural development’ appears in some significant contexts (as
well as in translations of other works by Freud). It may nevertheless be sug-
gested that the emphatic reference to ‘civilization’ reflects an implicit logic:
the most paradigmatic constructions of a universal cultural dynamic have
been linked to the idea of civilization in the singular, and Freud’s argument
is a highly distinctive contribution to that school of thought. A closer look at
his basic assumptions will show that they set very strict limits to the recog-
nition and theorizing of cultural diversity.
The construction of a unitary and universal model of civilization (Kultur
in the original) begins with strong claims about general needs or functions.
Freud refers to ‘the whole sum of the achievements and regulations . . .
which serve two purposes – namely to protect men against nature and to
adjust their mutual relations’ (Freud, 1963: 26). This introductory definition
foreshadows a functionalist theory of civilization, with a specific emphasis –
also found in some other theorists who define basic functions in anthropo-
logical terms – on the need to compensate for shortcomings of the human
organism and afflictions of the human condition. The instrumentalist stance
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 75

is obvious enough to provoke passionate criticism (in an exceptionally

scathing review of Freud’s book on religion, T. S. Eliot suggested that its
model of the truly cultured and civilized human being was the highly efficient
policeman). But Freud qualifies the functionalist view by insisting on the con-
flicts and tensions which derive from the very rationale of culture. Whether
his frame of reference allows for more fundamental correctives is a further
question to be considered below; at this point, it should be noted that the
anthropological-functionalist conception of a uniform civilizing process is
reinforced by more vaguely formulated notions of evolutionary unity.
The idea that ‘the development of civilization has . . . a far-reaching
similarity to the development of the individual’ (Freud, 1963: 81) is firmly
rooted in the European tradition of social thought, and although Freud’s
radical reinterpretation of the individual psyche gave a new twist to the
presumed parallels, he did nothing to put this belief on a sounder historical
basis. Moreover, he added the restrictive assumption of a fundamentally
invariant relationship between conscious and unconscious levels of the
psyche. Although Norbert Elias does not explicitly refer to Civilization and
its Discontents, that text contains some of the statements most obviously
targeted in the concluding sections of The Civilizing Process. Elias objects to
the idea of an ahistorical unconscious and argues that the changing balance
between ‘various sets of psychological functions’ (Elias, 2000: 409) can only
be understood in the context of changing inter-human figurations. The his-
toricity of the latter is reflected on the level of the psychic habitus. But Elias’s
critique of the psychoanalytical model deals only with the differences
between successive historical formations; the diversity of cultural (and in the
last instance civilizational) patterns is not thematized as such.
Although Freud’s basic premises led him to focus on culture or civiliz-
ation in the singular, a balanced discussion of Civilization and its Discon-
tents must also do justice to the limited but not negligible concessions to
cultural diversity at several points in the course of the argument. More pre-
cisely, the question to be considered is to what extent the distinctions essen-
tial to the understanding of civilization in the singular tend to translate into
distinctions between variants of the common pattern. The first tentative move
in that direction disappears in the English translation. Freud discusses the
various criteria of ‘cultural development’ and concludes with the observation
that the way of regulating social relations must be seen and assessed as a
significant ‘feature of a culture’ (Charakterzug einer Kultur ; Freud, 1948:
454). This implicit reference to one culture among others suggests that the
defining characteristics of culture in general might be unequally developed
– or even variously shaped – in the different cases to be compared. But the
English version of the text skirts the problem by mentioning only ‘the charac-
teristic features of civilization’ (Freud, 1963: 31). This inconclusive hint at a
plurality of cultural worlds is marginal to Freud’s main concerns. The most
distinctive and challenging part of his argument begins with the observation
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76 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

of individual demands clashing with those of civilization, and with the

question whether ‘accommodation can be reached by some particular form
of civilization or whether this conflict is irreconcilable’ (Freud, 1963: 33). In
this case, the apparent allowance for a variety of forms is hardly more than
a rhetorical gesture: Freud makes it very clear that he sees no good reasons
to expect any particular form to solve the problem. His emphatically anti-
utopian vision of permanent conflicts between individual human beings and
their civilized forms of life is based on metapsychological premises. The
essentials of his drive theory are well known and can be briefly recapitulated
(the term ‘instinct’, used in the English translation quoted above, is now
generally regarded as misleading). As Freud sees it, cultural development
relates to the drives in three different ways. They can be ‘used up’ (aufgezehrt
– this applies to some infantile dispositions), sublimated (i.e. channelled into
paths more compatible with cultural norms and values than their primary
dynamics were), or disciplined (in the sense that direct satisfaction has to be
renounced). The inbuilt ‘discontents’ of civilization are analyzed in connec-
tion with the two latter processes – neither sublimation nor suppression can
ever be plausibly envisaged as definitive and irreversible achievements.
The two drives subjected to civilizing constraints are the libido and the
‘inclination to aggression’; the latter is identified with the death drive, but in
the notoriously ambiguous and speculative way which led many of Freud’s
followers to revise the doctrine and speak of an aggressive or destructive
drive without any reference to ‘Thanatos’. This controversy is, however, irrel-
evant to the interpretation of Civilization and its Discontents. Both drives are
involved in the constitution of personality structures as well as social units
and cultural forms; and their respective transformative dynamics can reinforce
each other (for example, communities bound together by sublimated forms
of ‘aim-inhibited libido’ are consolidated by more or less overtly aggressive
attitudes to other groups). But as Freud surveys the specific expressions and
offshoots of each drive, the question of cultural unity and diversity re-
emerges in an interesting if under-theorized context. Although no attempt is
made to develop the concept of sublimation (implicitly open to the idea of
reorientation in multiple directions) as a key to cultural differentiation,
Freud’s discussion of the libidinous substratum of civilization notes signifi-
cant variations to the shared pattern: ‘civilization behaves towards sexuality
as a people or a stratum of its population does which has subjected another
one to its exploitation’ (the analogy makes it clear that Freud is referring both
to the absorption of energy and the denial of satisfaction, i.e. both to subli-
mation and suppression), but ‘not all civilizations go equally far in this’, and
a ‘high-water mark in such a development has been reached in our Western
European civilization’ (Freud, 1963: 41). There is, however, no comparable
acknowledgement of cultural diversity when it comes to the civilizing con-
straints on and uses of aggression.
Freud’s most striking and potentially most significant concession to
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 77

cultural pluralism comes at the end of the text. After reiterating his views on
similarities between individual and cultural development, he notes the possi-
bility ‘that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some
epochs of civilization – possibly the whole of mankind – have become
“neurotic” ’ (Freud, 1963: 81). But he is well aware of the enormous diffi-
culties which further testing of this hypothesis would face; the ‘pathology of
cultural communities’ appears as a likely future frontier area of psycho-
analysis, but not a project to be pursued in the short term. The idea was
occasionally reactivated on the margins of psychoanalysis or among anthro-
pologists (Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture is probably the best-known
case), but it has not had a major impact on comparative studies. In the present
context, it is perhaps most interesting when set alongside another far-
reaching suggestion. At a crucial point in his argument (after singling out the
inclination to aggression as the main antagonist of civilization), Freud goes
on to describe civilization as ‘a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose
is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races,
peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this
has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this’ (Freud,
1963: 59). The message could not be clearer: functionalist explanations of
cultural development are inadequate, and Freud proposes an interpretive
framework – without explanatory claims, at least for the time being – which
links social creativity to a metapsychological source. But if the civilizing
process, understood as an ongoing creation of new social forms, is an essen-
tially trans-individual expression of the erotic impulse (in the cosmological
sense which Freud ultimately gives to the two ‘immortal adversaries’, Eros
and Thanatos), there is no obvious reason to assume a thoroughgoing par-
allelism between individual and cultural development. Much more detailed
comparative research on each side separately would be needed before
attempting a synoptic analysis of both. Moreover, the criteria for defining
deviant or pathological forms would have to be formulated within the frame-
work of the higher-level process, rather than extrapolated from the lower-
level one. Freud did not pursue this line of thought, and no significant
additions to the concluding passages of Civilization and its Discontents can
be found anywhere in his work. The comments quoted above reflect both
the uncertain direction of metapsychological theorizing and its potentially
radical implications.

FRANZ BORKENAU: A METAPSYCHOLOGY OF CIVILIZATIONS?

Notwithstanding the limited and ambiguous results of Freud’s metapsy-
chological excursions, they became the main point of contact for the only
civilizational theorist (in the pluralistic sense indicated above) who sought to
make systematic use of psychoanalytical ideas. But in this case, the key theme
was not a process (or a plurality of processes) ‘in the service of Eros’; it was
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78 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

the other – and even more controversial – pole of metapsychological

reflection, the question of death and its meaning or lack of meaning for the
unconscious, that served to link different perspectives on the human con-
dition.
Franz Borkenau’s civilizational theory drew on many sources, grew out
of a complex intellectual trajectory and remained unfinished in crucial
respects. A civilizational turn was already implicit in his break with Marxism;
it became more pronounced through closer study of the sociological classics,
and especially as a result of reflection on totalitarian regimes and their diverse
forms. But Borkenau also became interested in more speculative versions of
civilizational analysis, practiced most famously by Oswald Spengler and
Arnold Toynbee, and tried to build bridges between them and the socio-
logical tradition. His references to Freud are best understood in that context.
He saw Spengler’s Decline of the West as a flawed project, concerned with
genuine and fundamental problems but vitiated by conceptual weaknesses;
in particular, the misguided notion of cultural monadism – self-contained
primal symbols giving rise to mutually alien cultural universes – was an
obstacle to historical and comparative analysis. For Borkenau, this view was
incompatible with the only coherent understanding of symbolism: ‘any
symbol must symbolize something that is itself not a symbol’ (Borkenau,
1981: 34), but it was no less important to avoid reductionist conceptions of
this relationship. Adorno’s critique of Spengler was, from that point of view,
an example of the cardinal error to be avoided. Adorno saw only the depen-
dence of symbols on the constraints and dynamics of social reproduction –
‘as if man’s confrontation with death, i.e., religion, were less fundamental
than his confrontation with life’ (Borkenau, 1981: 39). Borkenau draws on
Freud’s ideas to develop this line of argument; more precisely, the metapsy-
chological perspective serves to substantiate the claim that the confrontation
with death takes the form of an antinomy which cannot be acknowledged
as such but must be defused in ways which in the long run prove vulner-
able to assertions of the opposite view.
This thesis – as such – was never put forward by Freud, and Borkenau
did not try to back it up by references to textual sources. But the whole tenor
of the argument is more reminiscent of Freud’s ‘Thoughts for the Times on
War and Death’, first published in 1915, than of any other text. The world
war had, according to Freud, demolished the civilized superstructure and laid
‘bare the primal man in each of us’ (Freud, 1957: 299). This return of primi-
tive man was a reminder of fundamental psychological facts: ‘our uncon-
scious does not believe in its own death, it behaves as if it were immortal’
(Freud, 1957: 296). In so doing, it reveals a more general ignorance of neg-
ativity and contradiction. Freud’s conclusion is emphatic: ‘Thus there is
nothing instinctual in us which responds to a belief in death’ (Freud, 1957:
296). But the death of others is a familiar experience and a prime outlet for
aggressive inclinations. At this stage, Freud did not try to link the universal
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 79

human phenomenon of aggression to a death drive that would be internal

to the psyche.
In Freud’s terms, the unconscious behaves as if it were immortal.
Borkenau goes further and ascribes to him – without any reference – the
‘terse dictum’ that ‘the unconscious is immortal ’ (Borkenau, 1981: 64). As we
shall see, the shift is significant. But to begin with, another discrepancy
should be noted. The situation diagnosed by Freud might be described as a
structural split, but not as an antinomy. The two attitudes to death belong to
different levels of the psyche; an antinomy would only emerge if they came
to dispute the same ground. Borkenau tries to show that this is inevitable.
His argument involves major changes to Freud’s model (or successive
models) of the psyche, but basic conceptual implications remain unclear. The
argument begins with the birth trauma (discussed by Freud, but never linked
to his later speculations on the indirect presence of death in the unconscious);
this primal and universal experience, reactivated by the observed death of
others, may be seen as the source of the inner certainty of death, but the
deepest layer of the psyche can only be affected if it is predisposed to an
encounter. At this point, Borkenau considers Freud’s hypothesis of a silent
death drive and concludes that the idea of an internal and constitutive
relationship to death is plausible, but that the notion of a drive is manifestly
inappropriate in this context; when all is said and done, Freud only ‘hinted
at something more clearly, because less psychologically, stated by certain
modern philosophers: the presence of death as a motive force behind all
forms of human activity and as an inherent goal of all human striving’
(Borkenau, 1981: 67). The allusion to Heidegger is obvious. But the recon-
struction of Freud’s theory is left unfinished; a new metapsychological
framework, less dependent on the theory of drives, would obviously be
needed to make sense of the human relationship to death.
To complete the model of an ultimate antinomy, more must be said
about the translation of unconscious assumption into explicit certainty of
death. The relativization of boundaries between consciousness and the
unconscious, already evident in Borkenau’s discussion of death and its
meaning to the psyche, is even more crucial to this part of the argument.
Borkenau refers to primal symbols whose function is ‘to unveil rather than
to veil’ (Borkenau, 1981: 69); he also calls them archetypes, but makes it clear
that this does not entail complete acceptance of the Jungian concept; they
give conscious expression to unconscious contents, most massively when
there is – as in the case of the unconscious certainty of immortality – no
rationale for repression. In the last instance, however, immortality can no
more be imagined than death. The final twist to the antinomy is that both
certainties lead to permanent tension between the demands of thought and
the resources of the imagination.
As we have seen, Borkenau treated Freud’s ideas in a rather free-
wheeling way and did not go beyond the barest outlines of an alternative
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80 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

metapsychology. He was more interested in using a loosely reformulated set

of ideas as a key to comparative history. After a somewhat perfunctory
description of primitive societies, supposedly characterized by a ritual denial
of death which can escalate into paranoiac delusions, a more systematic dis-
cussion begins with the early civilizations. Here the thrust of Borkenau’s
objection to Adorno (and to historical materialism in general) becomes
clearer: as he argues, the all-round and in-depth transformation of social life
that took place in the great river civilizations of the ancient Near East cannot
be reduced to new ways of organizing material reproduction. The psychic
energy needed to sustain the changes could only have come from more exis-
tential sources, and for Borkenau, that means a new way of coping with the
antinomy of death. The new attitude may be described as ‘death transcen-
dence’, but it is not based on a simple affirmation of one side of the antinomy.
Rather, it represents a synthesis or a compromise which is at the same time
reflected in new forms of inequality: ‘mortality is socially stratified’
(Borkenau, 1981: 76), with direct and uncurtailed immortality reserved for
the deified ruler and some kind of substitute available to the elite around
him, but denied to the lower strata. But if these civilizations accept the cer-
tainty of death for the majority of their members, their civilizing efforts and
the new provisions for material existence can also be seen as compensations
for that sacrifice, and thus as strategies of indirect death transcendence.
This new set of cultural orientations was most clearly and comprehen-
sively embodied in ancient Egyptian civilization. Borkenau suggests in
passing that the Mesopotamian complex of cultures can be analyzed as a
weaker version of the same pattern, but makes no attempt to substantiate
that claim and does not confront the arguments of those who have contrasted
the Mesopotamian attitudes to death with the Egyptian ones (there is no
mention of the Epic of Gilgamesh). This is one of the most glaring gaps in
his argument; in light of the available evidence, it would seem much more
plausible to interpret the early civilizations as a spectrum of significantly
different responses to the problem of mortality (or, if we follow Borkenau,
the antinomy of death), rather than variations within a shared paradigm. But
he is on firmer ground when it comes to the subsequent development of the
Egyptian model. He distinguishes several trends: a ‘democratization’ of
immortality, making it available to lower strata, accompanied by a progres-
sive moralization of the belief in an afterlife, but also by the spread of prag-
matic and rationalist ideas which undermined the founding myth. These
processes interacted in different ways at successive junctures, including an
abortive attempt to destroy the death cults and their priesthood (Borkenau
takes Akhenaten’s new religion to involve a radical denial of life after death),
But the final result was ‘a mechanical return to the old myths and cults, and
ossification’ (Borkenau, 1981: 80), which masks an inner exhaustion of the
original project of death transcendence and a drift towards death acceptance.
At this point, Borkenau introduces one of the core ideas of his
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 81

civilizational theory – it probably took shape through reflection on the cases

in question. He distinguishes ‘culture generations’, each of which is rep-
resented by a group of cultures rather than a single one, and analyzes the
relationship between them as a cycle of the mythopoietic imagination.
Each successor culture (‘affiliated civilization’) begins with a primal myth corre-
sponding in content to the rationalizations of the late phase of the preceding
culture generation, and logically ends with a rationalization corresponding in
content to the primal myth of the preceding culture. (Borkenau, 1981: 75)

The ‘primal myths’ are responses to the antinomy of death, and the prime
case of a new generation is the ‘Judaeo-Hellenic group’, characterized by
death acceptance. It is far from obvious that the new attitude was prefigured
by the declining phase of the older generation; but as for the interpretation
of Hellenic and Hebraic cultures, there is no reason to disagree. A far-
reaching acceptance of human mortality is indeed characteristic of these two
traditions, and so is the complementary effort to give a ‘quality of eternity to
life in this world – in the Hellenic in the form of posthumous glory and eternal
beauty, in the Hebraic in the form of eschatological prophesies’ (Borkenau,
1981: 84). The latter aspect is, of course, a symptom of the underlying quest
for immortality. In that sense, death acceptance and death transcendence can
never be totally polarized; every constitutive myth is to some extent a mixture
of both. It must, however, be admitted that as Borkenau goes on, his formu-
lations tend to suggest a straightforward contrast and a cyclical pattern of
shifts from one attitude to the other. This becomes especially pronounced
when he moves beyond the Hellenic and Judaic culture generation to analyze
the rise of Christianity as a ‘new death transcendence’.
Here we need not discuss further details of the generational model. But
there is one more aspect of Borkenau’s Freudian connection that must be
briefly noted. The most overtly metaphysical part of his reflections on the
unconscious hints at the possibility that it might not only be the source of
the antinomy of death, but also – if properly understood – an opening to
new dimensions of reality and new perspectives on the antinomy. He stresses
the ontological implications of the concept of the unconscious (the parallel
with Castoriadis is obvious, but the result is very different) and argues that
the characteristics of timelessness, non-causality and absence of negativity
can only be understood in terms of a distinctive mode of being; a similar
challenge to inherited categories results from the development of atomic
physics (Castoriadis also noted that connection). Taken together, the two sets
of discoveries indicate a need to rethink basic ontological assumptions and
reconsider the question of reality beyond space and time. The immortality of
the unconscious should perhaps be reinterpreted in that context. It is true
that Freud backed away from his own insights and insisted on the thorough-
going determinism of the unconscious. But Borkenau tries to show that the
determinants which can be identified have more to do with a ‘teleology of
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82 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

reason’ (Borkenau, 1981: 128) than with any mechanicist model. Ultimately,
Freud’s analysis of the unconscious and its modus operandi reactivates the
question of freedom as ‘self-determination in accordance with the necessities
of one’s own being’ (Borkenau, 1981: 10). The upshot of all these consider-
ations is that the ontology of the unconscious problematizes the Kantian
order of things, on the side of the world of nature as well as the world of
freedom.

EXCURSUS: THE MORTALITY CONNECTION

Zygmunt Bauman refers to a ‘mortality connection’ of human cultures,
in the sense that apart from their specific ways and means of dealing directly
with the experience of death, the underlying imperative of culture can be
understood as a response to mortality. Cultures in the plural thus appear as
‘alternative ways in which that primary trait of human existence – the fact of
mortality and the knowledge of it – is dealt with and processed, so that it may
turn from the condition of impossibility of meaningful life into the main
source of life’s meaning’ (Bauman, 1992: 9). The most obvious recurrent
feature of the diverse strategies used for this purpose is the quest for tran-
scendence – in the most general sense, i.e. as ‘the expansion of spatial and
temporal boundaries of being’ (Bauman, 1992: 5), which can take worldly as
well as otherworldly forms. But the response is, by definition, a de-recog-
nition of the challenge: although all cultures develop beliefs, rituals and con-
ventions explicitly concerned with death, the mortality connection of their
overall patterns inevitably takes a self-disguising turn. Bauman’s hypothesis
can therefore – as he notes at the outset – only be tested through extensive
analyses of implicit and often opaque meanings, and comparative studies
would be crucial to further debate. Borkenau’s work – unfinished and specu-
lative as it is – is undeniably one of the very few significant ventures into
this field. Bauman quotes Borkenau’s discussion of Jewish and Hellenic
solutions to the problem of mortality, but does not link it to the background
assumption of an antinomy of death. His own argument is mainly about
modern and postmodern ways of coping with mortality; it draws on broader
historical perspectives, but apart from the general emphasis on diverse ways
to articulate the mortality connection, there is no explicit civilizational con-
nection.
The most insightful recent discussion of death and mortality from a
comparative civilizational angle can be found in the work of the Egyptolo-
gist Jan Assmann (2001). His approach has some affinities with Borkenau’s
ideas, but there is no significant psychoanalytical connection, and no invari-
ant framework of the kind exemplified by Borkenau’s antinomy; the problem
is posed with particular reference to the early civilizations of the Near East
(especially Egypt), but in this case the argument is based on detailed analysis
and expert knowledge.
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 83

Assmann begins by distinguishing two visions of the human condition.

The idea of man as a ‘deficient being’ (Mängelwesen), forced to build
societies and invent cultures to compensate for natural weaknesses, is a com-
monplace of 20th-century philosophical anthropology (most systematically
developed in the work of Arnold Gehlen, but easily adaptable – for example
– to historical materialism). It can, however, be traced back at least as far as
to the Sophists. The other image of man, as ‘not a being that can do too little
but one which knows too much’ (Assmann, 2001: 3), is even older: it was
developed in the ancient Near East and formulated most memorably in the
Epic of Gilgamesh. The excess knowledge is the awareness of mortality. If
this anthropological perspective is applied to culture, it seems likely that there
is ‘a connection between the principle of cultural competence and the
specific human relationship to death’ (Assmann, 2001: 1). In Borkenau’s
terms, death transcendence – very broadly defined and not identified with
belief in life after death – would then be the cultural imperative par excel-
lence. But Assmann does not interpret the human predicament as an
antinomy. Instead, he proposes a set of basic distinctions that could serve as
a provisional framework for a typology of cultural responses to mortality.
There is, most obviously, a contrast between this-worldly and otherworldly
horizons of meaning which transcend individual life. The belief in life after
death does not always make earthly existence more meaningful; if the realm
of the dead is deprived of meaning, a surrogate immortality can be found in
survival through collective memory, or in the continuity of generations. One
of the most remarkable features of ancient Egyptian civilization is the strong
emphasis on both this-worldly and otherworldly immortality. A second
contrast can be drawn between two attitudes to death: it can be patched on
(angestückt) to life as an external event, or understood as an integral part of
it. The former view has been taken by various rationalist thinkers and seems
to have become dominant in modern culture; the second found a classic
philosophical expression in Heidegger’s Being and Time, but on the level of
cultural patterns, there is hardly a more striking example than ancient Egypt.
The third distinction has to do with ways of defining the relationship between
the living and the dead. The boundary can be more or less sharply drawn,
and the dead can be perceived as a threat or as partners in a culturally regu-
lated relationship. Here the difference between early civilizations stands out
in relief: the former attitude is as distinctively Mesopotamian as the latter is
Egyptian. Finally, Assmann distinguishes two fundamental cultural orien-
tations: acceptance and rejection of death. Each of them has far-reaching
implications for the human self-image. Cultures of death acceptance tend to
conceive of the human being as part of the cosmic whole, confined within
a cycle of natural growth and perishing; cultures of death rejection, at least
at their most radical, are likely to insist on the uniqueness, spirituality and
immortality of the human being. The contrast is to some extent blurred by
the general tendency of religion to create counter-worlds (Gegenwelten)
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84 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

which enable human societies to live with the experience and awareness of
death. Assmann sees ancient Egypt – contrary to some appearances and
interpretations – as a culture of death rejection, but argues that this stance
took a specific direction: Egyptian culture seems to reflect a ‘unique
confidence in the power of counter-images or rather in the power of
language, representation and ritual action to transform the counter-images
into reality’ (Assmann, 2001: 21).
In Bauman’s terms, ancient Egypt is perhaps – among the great civiliz-
ations – the case where the ‘mortality connection’ is most visible throughout
all spheres of socio-cultural life. It is therefore a privileged starting-point for
comparative analysis. But here we cannot pursue the question any further.

BENJAMIN NELSON: FREUD AS A CIVILIZATIONAL

PHENOMENON
It may seem strange that this discussion did not begin with Benjamin
Nelson. Despite the fragmentary and tentative character of his work, it is now
recognized as a seminal contribution to civilizational theory, and there is
ample evidence of his interest in Freud’s writings. In an editorial preface to
an important collection of essays on ‘Freud and the twentieth century’, Nelson
advances some of the most extravagant claims ever made on behalf of the
psychoanalytical approach: ‘Freud seems destined to be the bridge from the
nineteenth to the twenty-first century’. In the Interpretation of Dreams, he
undertakes an exploration of the soul which ‘parallels and goes beyond that
of Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Dante, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Rimbaud’;
Civilization and Its Discontents is described as ‘the most distinctive statement
in the philosophy of history produced in the present century’ (Nelson, 1957:
10; it may be noted that both Spengler and Toynbee are listed among those
who pale into insignificance beside Freud’s analysis of civilization). In view
of all this, one might expect a sustained attempt to put Freud’s insights at the
very centre of civilizational analysis.
But Nelson did nothing of the kind. ‘Structures of consciousness’ are
the most central theme of his civilizational analyses; this concept is obviously
designed to integrate the Durkheimian problematic of collective represen-
tations as well as Weber’s analyses of cultural patterns of meaning and signifi-
cance. Nelson used it – among other things – to construct a new framework
for the history of religions, reformulate the question of the cultural origins of
modernity (from a perspective broadened beyond the classics), and to outline
a programme for the study of intercivilizational encounters. It would seem
impossible – for somebody as keenly aware of Freud as Nelson was – to
pursue this line of argument without confronting the question of the uncon-
scious and its relationship to consciousness. But the most representative texts
in question have next to nothing to say on Freudian themes. One of Nelson’s
most interesting essays discusses ‘eros, logos, nomos and polis’ as the basic
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 85

frameworks of socio-cultural processes, and the changing historical balances

between them (Nelson, 1981: 213–29). Apart from a fleeting and dismissive
reference in a footnote, there is no mention of Freud, although this ought to
have been a particularly appropriate context for closer engagement.
A posthumously published autobiographical text may throw some light
on this puzzling discrepancy. Nelson recalls his interest (as an undergradu-
ate) in ‘all of the possible meanings of Freudian theory’, and a decision to
prepare for long-term work on a question which grew out of this first
encounter: ‘What would a Freudian theory of symbolism have to be in order
to throw light upon the socio-cultural processes, the actual productions of
men in art, in science, in all the spheres of creative activity?’ (Nelson, 1985:
27). The strong emphasis on symbolism should be noted: Nelson obviously
saw the existing version of Freudian theory as inadequate in this regard, and
the implicit thematic connection to his later work on ‘structures of con-
sciousness’ is evident. But if his ultimate aim was to ground the analysis of
cultural patterns – on a civilizational scale – in suitably reformulated Freudian
insights, it must be said that this ambition was never fulfilled. Signs of its per-
sistence may be seen in Nelson’s preface to a collection of Freud’s essays on
‘creativity and the unconscious’; here he stresses that to see Freud only as a
psychiatrist is to misunderstand him and to disregard his broader interest in
‘both the animal basis and the ideal ends of the fabric of culture’ (Nelson,
1958: vii). In that regard, Freud can be compared to other philosophical inter-
preters of human creativity. But there is no further discussion of what might
be done to adapt Freudian theory more effectively to this field of inquiry. It
should be noted in pasing that Nelson was disinclined to make any direct
use of Jung’s work for this purpose: he credits Jung with ‘profound insights’
(without any specific comments) and with having understood the spiritual
crisis caused by the decline of traditional religion better than Freud did, but
refers to ‘wild exaggerations which came to characterize’ his work (Nelson,
1981: 61). The reader is left with the impression that a new frame of refer-
ence must be constructed, before we can attempt to sift the insights from the
exaggerations.
The autobiographical text quoted above also contains reflections on a
theme which Nelson explored in a more systematic fashion than the psy-
choanalytical connection, and which ultimately led him to approach the psy-
choanalytical phenomenon from another angle. He was trained as a
medievalist; his retrospective account makes it clear what first awakened his
interest: the ‘fascinating fact . . . that in the Middle Ages, people had worked
out an elaborate structure, a framework of moral and juridical government
for almost every sort of activity, experience, or relation, that they would have’
(Nelson, 1985: 26). His contributions to an ongoing reinterpretation of the
Middle Ages were of major importance, but will not be discussed here. But
the broader comparative and historical perspectives opened up through
better understanding of the medieval world are relevant to the present
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86 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

discussion. The ‘elaborate structure’ which Nelson discovered can be

compared to models and regimes of moral regulation in other cultures and
epochs; a clearer view of its complex dynamic can also serve to correct tra-
ditional accounts of the transition from medieval to modern forms of life. The
question of psychoanalysis and its cultural status can, as we shall see, be
related to both these contexts.
Nelson’s interest in changing ‘systems of spiritual direction’, from
Oriental methods of meditation to psychoanalysis, was closely linked to a
general theory of culture. He set out to extricate the concept of culture from
the mutually reductionistic fusion of society, culture and personality that had
become characteristic of structural-functional theory. With this end in view,
he distinguished various aspects of culture; the most detailed discussion
(Nelson, 1981: 17–33) refers to culture as a dramatic design, a defensive
system, a directive system and a symbol economy. In the present context,
the directive system – made up of ‘complexes of instructions charging us to
perceive, feel, think and perform in desired ways’ (Nelson, 1981: 23) – is the
most important part of this complex pattern. It is defined and theorized in
ways designed to avoid any misrepresentation of the individual as a ‘cultural
dope’, but when Nelson wants to stress the active involvement of the indi-
vidual (not equally characteristic of all directive systems), he speaks of
systems of spiritual direction. Their role is most significant in relation to ‘the
stresses and burdens we are called upon to bear’ (Nelson, 1981: 35), be it
those inherent in the human condition or the more contingent effects of
collective or individual misfortunes. In this dimension of social life, the
systems of spiritual direction converge with – or develop into – systems of
mental healing. As Nelson shows, these interconnections take different forms
in different civilizations and traditions, but key themes recur often enough
for systematic comparison to be possible. One striking feature of the Western
tradition, from classical antiquity onwards, is that ‘philosophy and psychiatry
have been in a relation of antagonistic cooperation’ (Nelson, 1981: 41); the
psychoanalytical movement is best understood as a new and still unfolding
phase in the history of this relationship, rather than a technical breakthrough
on one side.
Nelson had no doubts about the radically innovative potential of
psychoanalysis: he claims that ‘a new era in the history of spiritual direction
begins with Freud’ (Nelson, 1981: 55), and sums up the essentials of psycho-
analytic treatment in ‘ten articles’, all of which have broader cultural impli-
cations. But his discussion of details is very selective. Noteworthy claims have
to do with ‘regression in the service of the ego’, previously known as a
strategy of creative artists but now transformed into a therapeutic technique;
the new conception of transference, supposedly reason enough to describe
Freud as the ‘first great director of souls who recognized the threats to liberty
built into the strongly emotional connections of “master and disciple” ’; and
the idea of ‘universalistic consensualism’ as the operative central value of
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 87

psychoanalysis (Nelson, 1981: 61). These ideas add up to a strong statement

on the second question raised at the beginning of this paper. The civiliza-
tional significance and civilizing potential of psychoanalysis are seen as
matters for comparative inquiry. But once again, we are left with the impres-
sion of a research programme which did not progress beyond the first steps.
There is, however, another side to Nelson’s interpretation of Freud and
his legacy; it has to do with the complex and often counter-intuitive con-
nections between medieval and modern structures of consciousness. The
strong emphasis on medieval achievements in the realm of moral regulation
and self-regulation leads, in the first instance, to a markedly non-evolutionary
view of the transition to a new epoch: the breakdown of a whole order and
the multiple beginnings of a new one figure much more prominently in
Nelson’s version of the story than in the conventional ones. Moreover, the
properly understood medieval record of coping with the problems of con-
science makes some influential accounts of the sequel – such as Weber’s
Protestant Ethic – seem very incomplete. Closer examination of the interre-
lations between conscience and its cognitive horizons would be central to a
more balanced interpretation; Durkheim (perhaps aided by the double
meaning of the French word conscience) is praised for an incipient under-
standing of this issue, whereas Weber is accused of running away from ‘ques-
tions at that depth’ (Nelson, 1985: 33). But the realm of conscience is also
bounded by ideas and beliefs that are ‘beyond conscience’ in a more specific
sense, exemplified by the supremacy of revealed faith in the Middle Ages.
The mutations of this other side to the structures of consciousness are crucial
to the rival cultures of modernity. As Nelson would like to show (although
the details of the argument leave much to be desired), both Romanticism and
Enlightenment rationalism owe more than appearances or received opinions
would suggest to a common source: the impact of a resurgent Platonic or
neo-Platonic mysticism on Christian theology. Drawing on Paul Tillich’s
analyses, he describes the ultimate common denominator of the divergent
currents as a ‘religion of the transcendental self, the transmoral self beyond
conscience’ (Nelson, 1985: 53), and goes on to situate Freud in this context:
‘If we would appreciate what Freud and psychoanalysis mean in our present
era we need to know to what degree Freud is the heir of the religion of the
transcendental self, to what degree he is its undertaker ’ (Nelson, 1985: 54).
For all the claims quoted above, Nelson never answered this question in
unequivocal terms, and some of his statements suggest that he did not think
it could be settled. Freud’s basic assumptions were too ambiguous and his
philosophical anthropology too inarticulate for a clear assignment to either
side of the divide to be possible. A particularly telling comment in this vein
can be found in the autobiographical reflections. Nelson recalls the idea of
a ‘psychosynthetic’ treatment to complement the analytical one, proposed by
unorthodox analysts in the 1920s but rejected out of hand by Freud; as he
sees it, Freud’s negative response reflected a deep-seated but never explicitly
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88 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

stated belief in ‘a preestablished harmony ’ that would ensure reintegration

after the analytical dissolution of the ‘unhappy complex’ (Nelson, 1985: 32).
The transmoral conscience seems to be lurking somewhere in the back-
ground. For Nelson, this was a symptom of the most fundamental short-
comings of the modern mind: ‘To me, it is unthinkable that men should
expect to create a new and better world with an ethic that is predicated on
a transmoral conscience’ (Nelson, 1985: 33).

CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: IMAGINATION, SUBLIMATION AND

CIVILIZATION
The third question raised at the beginning of our discussion presup-
poses a hermeneutical frame of reference but not necessarily a full aware-
ness of it: it is now a commonplace that hermeneutical premises and
perspectives can be implicit in theoretical projects which do not define them-
selves in such terms. The case to be considered here is of that kind, and its
implications are best understood in relation to the hermeneutical model
which Paul Ricoeur applied to psychoanalysis. More precisely, the focus will
be on ways to relativize his distinction between the hermeneutics of sus-
picion and the hermeneutics of recollection. It might be objected that this
aim is easily compatible with Ricoeur’s own programme. He describes the
dichotomy as a provisional construct and a stage on the road towards a
general hermeneutics that has yet to be elaborated (Ricoeur, 1970). But at
the same time, he develops a strategy that would perpetuate the distinction
as a division of labour, and thus impose a specific direction on the project
of general hermeneutics: this reflects the needs of an epoch that has ‘not
finished doing away with idols and . . . barely begun to listen to symbols’
(Ricoeur, 1970: 27). Moreover, he explicitly centres the hermeneutics of rec-
ollection on a phenomenology of the sacred which privileges the paradigm
of revealed religion. The universal scope of this model leaves little room for
intercultural hermeneutics.
Hemeneutics is, for Ricoeur, a ‘theory of interpretation, conceived as
the understanding of plurivocal meanings’ (Ricoeur, 1970: 24); the ‘plurivo-
cal meaning’ par excellence is the symbol, defined as a complex significa-
tion ‘where another meaning is both given and hidden in an immediate
meaning’ (Ricoeur, 1970: 7). But the theoretical interpretation of interpre-
tation is a disputed field. To clarify the contrast between the modern
hermeneutics of suspicion and the more traditional (but not necessarily tra-
ditionalist) hermeneutics of recollection, Ricoeur underlines the shared
assumptions of the three otherwise very different ‘masters of suspicion’, Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud. They are anti-Cartesians in the sense that instead of
appealing to the evidence of consciousness, they ‘triumph over doubt as to
consciousness by an exegesis of meaning’ (Ricoeur, 1970: 33). For them, con-
sciousness is – structurally and uniformly – false consciousness in the sense
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 89

that it misconstrues the meanings with which it works. These meanings can,
however, be interpreted in ways which disclose their real contents (this is,
properly speaking, the hermeneutical aspect of the strategies in question);
but the ultimate contents are located beyond the realm of meaning (in that
sense, the hermeneutical effort culminates in a self-negating turn and a deval-
uation of the meanings with which it started). Marx derives plurivocal
meanings from productive activity, Nietzsche from the will to power and
Freud from the economy of the drives. It should be added that in all three
cases, Ricoeur disregards interpretive controversies that have proved hard to
settle.
As I will try to show, Ricoeur’s problematic has some points of contact
with the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis’s interpretation of psycho-
analysis has not been widely discussed, and to the best of my knowledge,
there has been no attempt to relate it to the hermeneutical context. Further
discussion of that question – here I can do no more than hint at the main
points – would have to begin with the ‘meaning of meaning’. Ricoeur’s
definitions of intepretation, hermeneutics and symbolism presuppose a rela-
tively clear dividing line between the elementary structures of meaning
(which should not be included in the hermeneutical field) and the realm of
‘plurivocal meanings’. Castoriadis’s theory of meaning calls this distinction
into question: ‘there is no proper meaning’, and ‘every expression is essen-
tially tropic’ (Castoriadis, 1987: 348). The fundamental indeterminacy of
meaning, its irreducibility to identitary uses, and its imaginary horizons make
it impossible to confine the problematic of interpretation to a separate field
marked off from the more manageable domain of general semantics.
Although Castoriadis was disinclined to use the language of hermeneutics, it
seems to me that his analysis of imaginary significations – as the social
medium of meaning – can, among other things, be read as a relativization of
the distinction between the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics
of recollection. If the magma of imaginary significations is a formative com-
ponent of the social-historical world, the plurality of interpretations to which
they are always open must also be seen as a defining characteristic. But there
is no purely strategic use of meaning – no more than there is a proper
meaning. If imaginary and therefore inexhaustibly disputable meanings are
constitutive of the social field, they are by the same token always already
involved in the formation of power structures and organizational patterns
within it. The critical analysis of interpretive constructs which reflect and mis-
represent underlying forces is inseparable from an effort to understand the
meaningful context to which both levels belong. In the most elementary
sense, the two hermeneutical perspectives thus complement each other.
More specific consequences follow from the integration of the psycho-
analytical field into the problematic of imagination and meaning. The redef-
inition of the unconscious as a domain of the creative imagination and
therefore of proto-meaning changes the whole frame of reference for the
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90 Thesis Eleven (Number 71 2002)

debates on the relationship between hermeneutics and psychoanalysis. But

over and above that, two particular aspects of Castoriadis’s argument should
be singled out: they represent, in a sense, opposite poles of his reflections
on the Freudian legacy, and taken together, they open up hermeneutical per-
spectives of particular importance to civilizational theory. On the one hand,
the idea of the primal monadic core – as the ‘first matrix of meaning’
(Castoriadis, 1987: 299), prior to any differentiation of the representative/
affective/intentional flux, and a prefiguration of all later demands for total
meaning – goes beyond all earlier conceptions of the unconscious. As
Fernando Urribarri argues in his contribution to this issue, it refers to a deeper
layer of the psyche than anything in the successive Freudian models. It is, of
course, based on a highly speculative interpretation of both clinical and non-
clinical experiences; but in that regard, it exemplifies the philosophical
ambition that has always been characteristic of psychoanalytical theory, even
when it hid behind a scientistic façade.
On the other hand, Castoriadis’s conception of sublimation is central to
his reinterpretation of psychoanalysis as well as to his broader philosophical
project. As Stathis Gourgouris (1997: 33) argues in a detailed discussion of
Castoriadis’s theory, sublimation cannot be assigned to one side of ‘the
society-psyche equation. It is what makes the equation possible, what
enables the two domains to exist and to be coherent, for without each other’s
force they would be nonsense’. It is, in other words, the mutual articulation
of two mutually irreducible dimensions of meaning. Freud’s theory of subli-
mation was notoriously underdeveloped, despite the obvious importance
which he attaches to the phenomena in question. As Castoriadis notes, the
closest Freud comes to recognizing the social-historical dimension of subli-
mation is to describe it as forced upon the drives by civilization; he thus
admits the irreducibility of the social realm, but in ahistorical and uniform
terms. It is tempting to suggest that the missing aspect is precisely the con-
nection between sublimation and civilizations in the plural. As Castoriadis
stresses, the social-historical content of sublimation is variable in the extreme:

sublimation is in each case such as it is, in each case specific, through the insti-
tution of society which renders obligatory for the innumerable individuals of
society particular objects of sublimation to the exclusion of others, and these
objects are caught up in relations with one another which not only give them
their signification but make the life of society possible as a relatively coherent
and organized life. (Castoriadis, 1987: 318)

Sublimation is, in other words, linked to large-scale and long-term cultural

diversity.
It is not being suggested that these ideas add up to a definitive con-
nection between psychoanalysis and civilizational analysis; they should be
seen as themes to be explored. The idea of the monad is controversial (some
critical comments can be found in Marcel Gauchet’s article in this issue), and
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Arnason: Psychoanalysis and Civilizational Analysis 91

it may be suggested that Castoriadis’s one-sided emphasis on it reflects a

shortcoming that is also apparent in his treatment of cultural diversity: a reluc-
tance to make full use of the phenomenological concept of the world, both
on the level of the human condition as a mode of being-in-the-world and in
relation to cultural patterns as articulations of the world. But his work is, in
any case, the most promising starting-point for further discussion.

Johann P. Arnason teaches sociology at La Trobe University and is an editor

of Thesis Eleven. His most recent publication is The Peripheral Centre: Essays on
Japanese History and Civilization, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002. [email:
J.Arnason@latrobe.edu.au]

Notes
1. The terms ‘civilizational theory’ and ‘civilizational analysis’ are often used inter-
changeably; if they are to be distinguished, it seems best to speak of civiliza-
tional analysis as the application of civilizational theory to substantive and
comparative studies. In the present context, both terms are used with reference
to civilizations in the plural.
2. See especially Krejčí, 1993.

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