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| | | -- By IrisAikateriniFrangou - 25 Feb 2021 | |
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< | The Function Of Arnold's "Reasonable Politician": Analogizing to Modern Psychiatry & Identifying The "Neurosis" in Man | >
> | Exploring Arnold's Social Psychology of Organizations Through the Lens of Intrapsychic Psychology & the Multiplicity of Individual Personality | | | | |
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< | Introduction | >
> | Arnold through Freud, and from Arnold to Putnam | | | | |
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< | Thurman Arnold’s “The Folklore of Capitalism” abounds in analogies to modern psychology and psychiatry in his effort to integrate 20th century ideals of social psychology in his theory of social organization. Can modern psychiatry help us then, in understanding the role of the “respectable politician”? I suggest that the respectable politician’s function is analogous to that of a psychiatrist, in that it manages the needs of neurotic individuals (like neurotic patients) through the politician’s loyalty to the organization (like the therapist’s fidelity to psychotherapy). In so doing, I will explain this “neurosis” of man, relying on Freud and Becker, that is to explain why it is “tears and parades” which drive the world – as the psychiatrist and politician necessarily know, using this knowledge to successfully placate their “patients”. By “respectable politician”, I refer to Arnold’s conception of the politician who effectively manages the organization’s survival and operation. | >
> | Thurman Arnold in “The Folklore of Capitalism” is concerned with the social psychology of organizations. To better understand his theory of social organization, the present essay first reduces social psychology to intrapsychic psychology and views the political leader as a psychiatrist or psychotherapist who treats neurosis in society. This “neurosis” is identified, through Freud, as the dissociation of mortality, which explains why it is “tears and parades” that drive the world i.e. why “man” (or Arnold’s individual party member) is in perpetual need of elevated, grandiose ideals that (imbued with a certain theatricality) inspire his continued enthusiasm. | | | | |
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< | The Respectable Politician & the Successful Organization | >
> | The second part of the essay, acknowledging the limitations of this reductive analogy (of political leader to psychotherapist) and hence of viewing social psychology as about man’s “neurosis”, seeks to further elucidate organizational behavior by building a bridge from Arnold to Frank Putnam, and drawing from Putnam’s state model of personality in the “Way We Are.” It sees personality as comprised of multiple states of being, the links between which, are shaped by interpersonal relations. Organizational behavior then, involves state dependent learning and memory. Over time, this results in complex personality states linked to organizations. | | | | |
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< | Before analogizing, we first must ask: what do successful organizations do? For Arnold, they are internally contradictory – they indicate one position in theory, but a different one in practice. It is in realizing the ubiquity of this contradiction (perhaps with the exception of “minor parties” he says, who are not seeking power) or rather, it is in realizing that no matter how much “creeds” change the de facto strategies of the respectable politician are the same (adjusted to a political climate of peace or crisis) that Arnold finds all ideologies claptrap. Yet, they remain necessary for appeasing the individual member, which is why they exist. Thus, the respectable politician is effective because he understands that “fundamental loyalties must be given not to principles, but to organizations” (p. 384). However, for the organization to deliver (de facto), it needs to allow this (sufficiently broad) mythology to run rampant (in theory), accommodating every individual member and conferring organizational | >
> | An offshoot of such states are complex collective personality states that embody the “paranoid style” in (American) politics (as Richard Hofstadter coined it)- an enduringly psychic phenomenon that uses paranoid modes of political expression by normal people. Ironically, the present essay argues, the paranoid style organization (or spokesman) plays on the multiplicity of social psychology but manipulates it to forge a worldview to its members that denies that very multiplicity – that reduces the world to a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil. It is within that framework of understanding that the essay attempts to explain both the survival of the paranoid style in this type of collective personality state and the impetus for its emergence. | | | | |
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< | The makings of a theory | | | | |
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< | -+++ Analogizing the respectable politician to the professional psychiatrist | >
> | Social Psychology as Intrapsychic Psychology: The “Neurosis of Man” as Dissociation of Mortality | | | | |
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< | Having clarified that the politician’s focus is on the organization itself, how are we to understand his role vis-à-vis the institution’s individual members? Perhaps by analogizing to the psychiatrist. Psychiatrists diagnose and treat the mental disorders of individuals. Central to the treatment is their loyalty to psychotherapy. The two main subcategories of psychotherapy techniques are “relationship-building” ones and “confrontational” ones. The former relies on the therapist’s minimal verbal interruptions, encouraging the patient to continue speaking. The latter, mandates that sometimes, the psychiatrist confronts the patient (e.g. gross blind spot instances) to maintain the therapy’s effectiveness. Thus, the professional’s management of the patient is geared towards the therapy’s success, balancing between much tolerance and little intervention. | | | | |
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< | Similarly, the respectable politician can be thought of as managing his own host of patients – the individual “neurotic” members of society comprising his organization. Essential to treating them effectively is the politicians’ fidelity to the organization itself, in the service of which ideology becomes a technique of political management (akin to the technique of psychotherapy). Just as the psychotherapist relies largely on minimal intervention, so too does the respectable politician: he does not undermine neurotic members’ ideologies, but instead he finds value in their expressiveness (since they help the organization “persevere” in the long run, similarly to how expressed thoughts of patients help the “treatment” over time). The politician only intervenes to confront individual members who pose a threat to the continued coherence of the organization, just as the psychotherapist intervenes when the patients’ thoughts or behaviors endanger the success of therapy. | >
> | For Arnold, successful organizations are internally contradictory. It is in realizing that no matter how much “creeds” change the strategies of the effective politician are the same, that Arnold finds all ideologies claptrap. Yet, they remain necessary for appeasing the individual member, which is why they exist. Thus, the respectable politician is effective because he understands that for the organization to deliver (de facto), it needs to allow this (sufficiently broad) mythology to run rampant (in theory). | | | | |
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< | But what is the “neurosis” of man that respectable politicians manage? | >
> | Given the politician’s focus on the organization itself, how are we to understand his role vis-à-vis the institution’s individual members? Perhaps by analogizing to the psychiatrist/psychotherapist. Therapists rely on “relationship-building” and “confrontational” techniques (with medical psychiatry omitted for simplicity) to treat the mentally disordered, balancing between much tolerance and little intervention. Similarly, the politician can be thought of as managing his own host of patients – the individual “neurotic” members of his organization. Essential to treating them is his fidelity to the organization itself, in the service of which ideology becomes a technique of political management (akin to that of psychotherapy). Just as the therapist relies largely on minimal intervention, so too does the politician; he only intervenes to confront individual members who pose a threat to the continued coherence of the organization, just as the therapist intervenes when the patients endanger the therapy’s success. | | | | |
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< | Exploring the "neurosis" of man: an attempt at definition | >
> | But what is the “neurosis” of man that respectable politicians manage? This involves asking why “tears and parades” dominate the world. Arnolds describes these as “mythologies” – fundamental lies and mirages. I call them “neuroses” and, by relying on Freud, turn all social psychology intro intrapsychic psychology. Freud suggests that we are all driven by the pleasure principle, by easy physical and emotional rewards. As we mature, society demands that we substitute immediate pleasure for long term gratification, so we move from the pleasure to the reality principle. The faulty adaptation to this reality principle is what creates “neuroses”, to the treatment of which Freud applies psychoanalysis. | | | | |
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< | This necessarily involves asking why “tears and parades” dominate the world. That is, why is man in perpetual need of elevated, grandiose ideals that inspire his enthusiasm and are theatrical in nature? Arnolds describes these as “mythologies” – fundamental lies and mirages. I call them “neuroses” and since Arnold’s theory of social organization relies on the dominance of Freud’s “unconscious”, let’s begin there. Freud suggests that we are all driven by the pleasure principle, that is by easy physical and emotional rewards. As we mature, pleasure is replaced with reality and society demands that we substitute immediate pleasure for long term gratification, so we move from the pleasure to the reality principle; gratification is still desired but is delayed by reality’s exigencies. We cannot make ourselves fully rational but we also cannot change society’s heavy dictates (the suppression of our immediate desires, the need to work to earn money etc). There is no easy solution and this is the source of human unhappiness. The faulty adaptation to this reality principle (the repression of the pleasure principle) is what creates “neuroses”, to the treatment of which Freud applies psychoanalysis. | >
> | Approached from this point of view, the tendency for “tears and parades” inherent in all men consoles us by glorifying our existence, making our societal conformism seem worthy of the incurred hardships on which it relies, and, in conjunction with our existential dread, helps us creatively transcend death. Simply put, the “neurosis” is our dissociation of mortality, to the appeasement of which we embrace such exalted ideologies. | | | | |
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< | Approached from this point of view, perhaps the tendency for “tears and parades” inherent in all men (to varying degrees, and with various manifestations) is our method of unconsciously coping with society’s exigencies in the face of our recognition that we cannot change society. It is a means of justifying why we put up with society, which in conjunction with our existential dread, heightens the need to glorify our existence on earth. The “tears and parades” then are most conducive to the dramaturgical glorification of life in civilized society aimed to appease our neurosis. This, of course, is a losing battle but the consistency with which it is waged by us is what gives respectable politicians the ability to effectively manage the organization to which we belong. | >
> | Social Psychology as Inherently about Multiplicity: "We are many, not one" | | | | |
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< | The need for tears and parades, rooted in the pleasure principle, is enhanced by our dread of death. Per Freud, death is at odds with the ego so we erect “vital illusions” to deny mortality. Death therefore, as Ernest Becker suggests, is a problem we need to solve to avoid it becoming uncontrollably pathological. Becker offers three modes of death transcendence: the religious (transcending the ego by identifying with God), the romantic (identifying with the divinity of our partner), and the creative solution (gaining immortality through the creation of things that live on after us). | >
> | Clarity is always gained by simple taxonomies, but reducing social psychology to the “neurosis of man” comes at the cost of further exploration. What if we tried to compensate for what is lost by such reduction, by now conceptualizing of social psychology differently - as being inherently about multiplicity, that is, about the multiplicity of individual personality? | | | | |
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> | Putnam sees personality as the “collective dynamics of a person’s set of identity, emotional, and behavioral states” (Putnam, p. 159), that is, as comprised of multiple states of being, the connections between which, are shaped by interpersonal interactions. “We are all multiple to some degree” and we change our states of being as we “change context and roles”. “Normality” and “abnormality” is then often understood as the effect of “how well someone instinctively matches his state of being to the daily flow of social situations” (Putnam, p. 121). The state model of personality therefore (moving away from the conception of personality as unitary and stable), acknowledges both the multiplicity of self, and the social exigency for context-dependent personality state shifts. | | | | |
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< | Conclusion | >
> | Organizational behavior then, which de facto operates in society at large, can also be seen (or, rather, ought to be seen – if one is to accept Putnam’s theory of multiplicity) as involving state dependent learning and memory. All political organizations can be understood as both playing on their member’s multiplicity of self and modelling, in aggregate, their own multiplicity on that of their members and in so doing, creating a collectively embraced organizational identity. The organization both draws from members’ states of being (perhaps on those states that are more likely to appeal to and therefore placate the members themselves, depending on their members’ prior socialization e.g. the interaction of race, class, gender, ethnicity etc.), and also reinforces those states of being within their members’ existing multiplicity of self, thereby defining “normal” i.e. socially/politically acceptable and “abnormal” i.e. socially/politically unacceptable behavior, respectively. Over time, as history progresses and as organizations themselves interact with one another in society, this results in complex personality states linked to organizations.
The Paranoid Style of American Politics
An offshoot of such complex collective personality states are the ones that embody the “paranoid style” in politics (as Richard Hofstadter coined it)– an enduringly universal psychic phenomenon that uses paranoid modes of political expression (namely, polemic hyperbole, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy) by normal people (Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics). In the context of American politics today, this paranoid style is expressed by the contemporary right wing, as is most emblematically manifested for instance, by the far right QAnon conspiracy theory.
Ironically, through the incorporation of Putnam’s multiplicity of self, the paranoid style organization (or spokesman) can be seen as playing on the multiplicity of social psychology but manipulating it to forge a worldview to its members that denies that very multiplicity – that reduces the world to a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, rejecting the ambiguity, conflict, and fallibility of the self. To make such worldview credible, the paranoid style spokesman goes to great lengths to give it coherence (often by imitating the tools of his sworn ideological opponent), but such successful coherence is premised on a completely personal interpretation of history, turning “every accident or incompetence into an act of treason” (Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics), that is magnified through the effects of mass media. Hofstadter suggests that the enemy of the paranoid style spokesman is in many ways a projection of the spokesman’s self in both its ideal and unacceptable aspects. Through the lens of Putnam, this can be seen as the paranoid style organization/spokesman (and thereby the paranoid style member) attempting to deny its own (and its enemy’s) multiplicity of self, by disciplining their mind to viewing reality through the absolutist, dual lens of good and evil.
Perhaps, an explanation for the emergence of this phenomenon of the paranoid style organization can be attempted by regarding its members as having been afflicted by certain circumstantial shifts in society (e.g. economic depression) that in combination with certain well-established conditions (e.g. religious traditions) are conducive to the formulation of such “psychic energies” as Hofstadter puts it (or to a heightening of man’s “neurosis”, to go back to our reductive analogy). The irony of it all of course, is that it is the very multiplicity of social psychology that ensures the survival of the paranoid style embodied in this type of collective personality state. It is only through the existence of the multiplicity of social psychology that the paranoid style organization is even able to coherently (albeit erroneously) express its denial of such multiplicity. | | | | |
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< | Through such lens, “tears and parades” can be perceived as a “creative solution” of constructing lofty ideals and binding ourselves to them to gain consolation similar to that “offered by a… dramatist to his hero who is facing a self-inflicted death” (Freud on religion’s effects, “Civilization and Its Discontents”, Ch. 1). Thus, the exalted ideologies (forming man’s neurosis) can be perceived as the dramatists we create in our own lives, saving us both from death and the conformist exigencies of society (pleasure principle problem). So why do we tear up at a parade? Belief in the ideology of patriotism (to run with Arnold’s illustration) consoles us by making our societal conformism seem worthy of the incurred hardships on which it relies, and by helping us creatively transcend death. | | | | |
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There are many good ideas here: this is a substantial first draft. The best route to improvement, in my view, is focus and a concomitant decrease in repetition. The reason the present draft requires multiple statements of the same points is that the organization is insufficiently linear. This feels as though it is well symbolized by retaining the template organization at the top of the draft, unused. I modified the markup to restore the table of contents to functionality, accordingly. | | | | |
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< | I think the piece's main idea could be stated succinctly as: Arnold is concerned with the social psychology of organizations, so let's turn all social psychology back into intrapsychic psychology, and see the political or organizational leader as a psychiatrist or psychotherapist treating neurosis in society (called, with necessary ambiguity and over-specificity, "Man"). On the basis of this analogy, and by identifying the "neurosis" as the dissociation of mortality, we can explain why we tear up when the parade passes by. | | | | |
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< | Getting the idea down in this abbreviated form (which obviously should be modified with respect to any misunderstandings in my version) not only provides the introduction of the draft, but also helps to locate the points where further thinking should occur. What is lost, for example, in the desocialization of social psychology, and the reduction of psychotherapeutic approaches to those that push (pills or discomforts, though you basically ignore medical psychiatry completely), and those that listen? Clarity is always gained by simple taxonomies and reductive analogies: without the Niels Bohr reductive version of the hydrogen atom, we would lose as much as we would gain. But that's because we also do both quantum mechanics and general relativity. We should at least try to compensate for what we lose when we think of social psychology as not inherently about multiplicity, or about "the neurosis of Man" as a category. About the multiplicity of individual personality, the Putnam-ness of the way we are, it might also be useful to do some thinking. What if the direction of flow is not to Arnold from Freud, but to Putnam from Arnold? What if creeds are the processes through which identity states are created? What if organizational behavior involves state dependent learning and memory, resulting over time in complex personality states linked to organizations, resulting in complex observable collective personality states engaging in negative partisanship, or believing in QAnon, or otherwise exemplifying—as Richard Hofstadter so famously put it in an essay that might also well inform your next draft—the "paranoid style" in American politics?
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