DANIEL SHANAHAN
and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered
anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property.
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Not only are these thoughtful criticisms, they also reveal the basis for
the underlying skepticism Freud fe lt about civilization. First, Freud was
absolutely convinced that man was an aggressive animal and that any at–
tempt to curb human aggression was bound to produce frustration. For
Freud, civilization mere ly increased the level of each individual's frustra–
tion by forcing him to moderate his most powerful interest: the individ–
ual's preoccupation with himself and his own drives.
Freud would have seen in socialism's optimism about man nothing
more than a new narcissism, a carefully disguised, but virtually unchanged
form of self-interest which persisted in ignoring fundamental truths about
human nature. Earlier, in
crollp Psychology alld the Allalysis of the Ego
(1921), Freud had said that groups were built on a foundation of
widespread and binding attachment to a leader. Although he does not
refer specifically to socialism in
crollp Psychology alld the Allalysis of the
Ego,
Freud would have explained socialism in much the same way: Large
numbers of people waive their right to instinctual demands and attach
themselves to a leader - in this case the idea of economic justice replaces
the leader - and they experience their own narcissism, or self-love,
vicariously through the illusion that this ideal favors them especially.
Narcissism is a pivotal concept in Freud's model of man because it
lies at the heart of his approach to human behavior, and it also brings
into focus the true nature of Freud's anti-individualism. He saw the hu–
man infant beginning in a state of indifference to the world around him,
vacillating between the peace of infant sleep and the vague and generally
unpleasant sensations of waking life. But when the infant's interest in the
outside world began to emerge, Freud saw a stage during which prefer–
ence for the self - narcissism - provided the infant's budding conscious–
ness with the first, and for a time, the only reference for sensation. In–
deed, all stimuli were seen as an extension of the self during the narcissis–
tic stage. For Freud, narcissism constituted the first development of hu–
man consciousness, and it was through his study of "absolute, primary
narcissism" that most of his ideas about libido were formed.
If all went well, Freud said, an infant moved gradually through the
narcissistic stage and began to recognize, with greater and greater accu–
racy, where the self left off and otherness began. However, trauma could
prevent the child from moving on to the recognition of otherness, or it
could send him back to a narcissistic mode later in life. Both occurred
when the trauma was serious enough to make the individual fear change
and growth. In young and old alike, trauma could trigger a return to
