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Law in Contemporary Society
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Paper Title-- By IrisAikateriniFrangou - 25 Feb 2021Section ISubsection ASubsub 1Subsection BSubsub 1Subsub 2Section IISubsection ASubsection BTHE FUNCTION OF ARNOLD’S “REASONABLE POLITICIAN”: ANALOGIZING TO MODERN PSYCHIATRY & IDENTIFYING THE "NEUROSIS" IN MAN I. Introduction Thurman Arnold’s “The Folklore of Capitalism” is rife with analogies to modern psychology and psychiatry in his effort to integrate 20th century’s 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. II. The Respectable Politician & the Successful Organization 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 coherence. III. The makings of a theory A. Analogizing the respectable politician to the professional psychiatrist 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. 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. But what is the “neurosis” of man that respectable politicians manage? B. Exploring the "neurosis" of man: an attempt at definition 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, 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. 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). IV. Conclusion 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. You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. 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