Psychoanalysis – mags neg General 1NC
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- Jacobsen 2013
AnswersAT: Can’t Explain IR Psychoanalysis is a critical starting point in examining international relations --- there is not a single leader who acted completely according to the aff’s positivist theory of IR --- why did the US adopt domino theory when none of our allies accepted it? --- absent the alt’s analysis, policymakers will always shift their failed desire onto an external scapegoat, ensuring dangerous interventionsJacobsen 2013 --- University of Chicago (Kurt, “Why Freud matters: Psychoanalysis and international relations revisited”, International Relations, SagePub)//trepka Scholars of politics, not just international relations (IR), long have neglected psychoanalysis. The attacks on Freud and his followers over the last generation evidently discouraged political scientists from exploring psychoanalytic methods.1 An earlier generation of scholars – Paul Roazen, Fred Alford, Michael Rogin, Fred Greenstein, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, and others – had taken a deep interest and produced many works of distinction. That interest is long gone, except for a minor and embattled presence in the sub-field of political psychology. Even there, little has changed in three decades since a volume entitled Psychological Models in International Politics appeared, devoid of a single reference to psychoanalysis.2 Freud, as Paul Roazen lamented long ago, ‘has remained throughout political science something of a spook’.3 Roazen referred to American political science. Critics of this summation combed political science to cite at best a few marginal forays (usually British or Commonwealth in origin) into psychoanalysis, which is of interest only insofar as a particular analyst thereby buttresses his or her paradigmatic preferences in constructivism or poststructural discourse analysis.4 A major methodological objection to psychoanalysis is that an investigative means devised for individuals is inadvisable to apply to collective entities. States cannot possess egos, ids, or superegos – although a case has been made by Zizek, and Erich Fromm long before him, for the palpable influence of an ‘institutional unconscious’.5 Freud was alert to the perils of overstepping domains when he pondered whether civilizations could be neurotic.6 Psychoanalysts, an eminent analyst cautions, are: uniquely qualified to understand, analyze and assist the patient on the couch, but as soon as they move away from this personal confrontation (or the modification of a small group) to comment on matters outside their training and experience, the value of their comments would appear to depend on their knowledge and wisdom, not on their qualification.7 While some scholars draw upon cognitive frameworks to analyze otherwise overlooked political phenomena, psychoanalysis remains firmly on the fringes of IR where Lacanian discourse analysts treat us to such illuminating sentences as, ‘It then endeavors, via constructing fantasies, to use transitive discourse objects to sustain the desire for the constructed dichotomies, which hankers for discursive closure’.8 Psychoanalysis, contrary to his proponents, neither begins nor ends with Lacan. Few scholars deny that psychological factors exert a significant effect upon politics. Hans Morgenthau wrote that international politics was primarily psychological in character, and that the personal inclinations and oddities of leaders can at crucial times matter a great deal.9 If anarchy is ‘what we make of it’ (and the rise of Athenian power created anxiety in Sparta), then it pays to ask who we are in our inner worlds as well as in our outer guises when we make something out of whatever we behold.10 At what point in an explanation do psychological factors – from personal quirks to group dynamics to mass perceptions – become important? From the very beginning of our lives, is the psychoanalytic answer. Indeed, psychoanalysis aims to change where the beginning is reckoned to begin in any explanatory probe. In the 1930s, radical analyst Wilhelm Reich was really rather moderate when arguing that psychoanalysis had a role in explaining why actors pursue what to the external observer are irrational, blinkered, and self-injurious actions.11 Reich’s intent was not only to explain ‘deviations from rationality’ but to inquire into the adequacy of our notion of rationality, especially as this seductive and problematic concept is buffeted by changing contexts and personal interests.12 Misperception is a widely accepted phenomenon in IR now, as is the imputed sway in decision-making circles of analogical reasoning, such as the domino theory.13 But important differences exist between Freud’s depth psychology and, to use shorthand for a bundle of related practices, ‘cognitive psychology’.14 The purpose of psychoanalysis is to pry into our unconscious drives and defenses to illuminate their influence over the motives and behavior of the beholder as well as the beheld.15 Cognitive psychology, unlike psychoanalysis, usually exempts practitioners from being prey to their own forms of unexamined irrationality, which may be one reason for its relative toleration in the field. This essay reconsiders, long after Lasswell’s heyday, whether psychoanalysis, beyond discourse analysis, can be a useful interpretive approach in international politics. What is the significance in human behavior of the unconscious, that is, of motives and forces of which we are largely unaware?16 (Extremely significant, Freud says, because unconscious forces, if unexposed, tend to make our decisions for us.) The first section examines Freudian analysis and its uneasy relation to political analysis.Zizthen examine key issues raised by psychoanalysis regarding the efficacy of IR models, the concept of selfinterest, and the waging of war. Finally, to appraise the ‘value added’ of this approach,Zizexamine psychoanalytic understandings of intervention in Vietnam and, more briefly, the ‘war on terror’. The argument is that psychoanalytically attuned approaches yield important insights into the wielding of power. Psychoanalytic triggers Psychoanalysts regard human emotional life as a continuum in which we share every feeling and impulse to some degree, and indulge or capitulate to them if the combination of internal and external conditions is right. Violent emotions are universal, as much so as love, though they usually are channeled in muted ways that avert harm in everyday life. One is only tempted to summon the psychoanalyst when excesses form a profoundly damaging pattern. The same rule of thumb goes for bringing psychoanalytic perspectives, or psychological predilections of leaders, to the fore in inquiries: Do so when behavior is very much out of keeping with observable circumstances. Freud, while shying away from direct applications to politics, always intended that psychoanalysis contribute to the social sciences and even to public health.17 At minimum, such exploratory expeditions demand considerable knowledge both of psychoanalysis and of the social scientific field into which one introduces analytic concepts. One may well ask whether we need to know what, for example, the youthful years of leaders have to do with their professional lives. Their actions surely are overdetermined.18 Methodological humility, a rare enough trait anywhere, is called for. In 1965, after the long-distance ‘analysis’ of candidate Barry Goldwater, the American Psychiatric Association president rebuked those who diagnosed political personalities from afar.19 Psychological reductionism is a tempting pitfall, though anyone trained in political science, with its overvaluation of quantitative methods and formal theory, is unlikely to stumble into it.20 One thereby would underestimate familiar tangible forces that shape political decisions. Still, seasoned scholars cannot credibly deny that international politics is at best only partly a rational enterprise. If so, IR is a valid arena for psychoanalytic inquiry. What some players within IR deem rational – ‘thinking about the unthinkable’, ‘brinksmanship’, or ‘winning hearts and minds’ through supposedly selective violence – will appear irrational to beholders who apply different standards. ‘You can’t be too careful’ is a bromide that counterproductively spurs dangerous imbroglios, such as the security dilemma.21 Rationality often is what we choose to make of it, under institutional pressure, disciplinary habits, and unexamined personal traits. Mercer notes how rational choice notions, supposedly stripped of emotion, consistently lead to distorted depictions of human action, although this insight harks back half a century or more in Freudian annals.22 Consider too Mannheim’s classic distinction where what is functionally rational is not always substantively rational.23 Ellul captured this significant divide acutely when he defined technology as the application of increasingly refined means to ever more carelessly considered ends.24 Rationality is conceived as rationalization, a defense mechanism cloaking other motives, which may or may not be conscious. Psychoanalysis is applied not only to the leadership but also to relations between elites and the citizenry. Rose notes that actors must be understood not only in terms of their material interests and institutional constraints but also in terms of their images (of reality) and identifications.25 This venerable formulation sets up interestingly porous dichotomies between inside and outside (private and public), and between the social and psychic. A lack of personality and group psychology studies only deprives us of useful ways to burrow into the ‘agentic’, which is, after all, where the ‘mutual constitution’ of agency and structure that constructivists are so concerned about occurs. As for realists, the political murderers in a Brecht play apologize to their victim: ‘Sorry – force of circumstance’ – a sentiment realists readily understand. But one trouble with halting inquiry here is that Freud demonstrated how often, to quell a conscience or to fool an outsider, we attribute to circumstances what are our own impulsions. ‘A common psychodynamic mechanism is to convert desire so that it appears an external necessity’, Bakan explains, ‘It is thus an open question in each instance whether what appears to be external necessity really is that, or simply a facet concealing some internal pressure’.26 Hence, even when interests seem to do the trick in explaining behavior, actors may resort to pleasing or exculpating rationales to justify callous aims. Acknowledging this slippery fact of political life is useful to understanding and even anticipating what actors do. The story that the US elites invaded Iraq because they feared a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) threat does not play well anymore despite interesting but tenuous defenses.27 If key actors say they were misled by faulty intelligence, which they had a strong hand in purveying, then one is well advised to look elsewhere for explanation. Typically, we can come up with a plausible answer based on material interests such as oil (ridiculed in mainstream circles at the time). Typically too, there are ‘multiple equilibria’ in policy choice. Why did these leaders select this course of action when force of circumstances was not determinative? Why impute credence to what is ‘in actors’ heads’ when imputation of material factors or structural forces can do the job? The reason is that although social structural forces operate apart from individual human agency, they remain dependent on the character of human beings to carry them out. ‘It is precisely at this juncture that Freudian theory proves so suggestive’, Lichtman argued, ‘For the conjunction of individual intentions and social structures is embedded dialectically in the alienated institutions of social life and in the repressed unconscious of specific social agents’.28 How does this apply in IR? Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
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