Freudian Concept of Ego
By
Nadeem F. Paracha
27 Dec 2020
In his 1954
book Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, H. Bolitho writes that, in 1920 when Mahatma
Gandhi’s Indian National Congress and India’s pan-Islamists came together to
force the ouster of the British from the region through protests, Muhammad Ali
Jinnah was not amused.
Illustration by Abro
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Bolitho
describes Jinnah as someone who was steeped in the political and social
traditions and ideas of British liberalism and constitutionalism. In 1916,
Jinnah had worked as a bridge between the Congress and the Muslim League and
invested a lot of energy in gaining some important political concessions from
the British for the Hindu and Muslim polities of India. However, four years
later, when Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement merged with the pan-Islamic
Khilafat Movement, Jinnah wrote a letter to Gandhi warning him that these
movements had the potential of unleashing religious and communal sentiments
that would be hard to control and, thus, lead to chaos.
Jinnah
concluded his letter by writing, “what the consequences of this may be, I
shudder to contemplate.”
As opposed
to Gandhi’s Indian nativism and performative ‘spiritualism’, and the
religiously-motivated impulsivity of the pan-Islamists, Jinnah was a 20th
century Indian extension of the ‘Age of Enlightenment.’ Also called the ‘Age of
Reason’, it had evolved from various ideas and philosophies in Europe between
the 17th and 19th centuries. It advocated the triumph of reason, science,
individuality and democracy over religious ritualism, superstition, monarchism,
feudalism and emotionalism.
Enlightenment
ideas and narratives had triggered dramatic revolutions in the US and France
and ushered in ‘modernity’ on the backs of rapid industrialisation, market
economics, the rise of science and of philosophies which claimed that mankind’s
well-being lay not in its chaotic passions and impulses, but in the evolution
and maturity of man’s ability to apply reason and logic in whatever he did.
The
resultant modernity was also the consequence of a rising middle-class that had
rebelled against monarchism and the landed elites, replacing them with the
ideas of democracy and an integrated economy which, in turn, had given birth to
the concept of nationalism and the nation state. Indeed, Enlightenment ideas
and modernity were attacked by various differing schools of thought, but once
modernity and its ideals had catapulted several Western nations into becoming
global powers, all opposing ideas were relegated to the fringes.
In 1920,
Enlightenment ideals, and political, economic and social modernity were still
at the centre of all governing models in the Western world. These ideals had
also been adopted by various segments of the societies that were colonised by
the European nation-states.
Modernity’s
critics hit back, accusing its cold logic of progress and its mechanised
products for the carnage witnessed during World War I (1914-1918). The
modernists, meanwhile, claimed that not enough had been done to subdue the
primitive impulses that humans still harboured. This idea was now rooted in the
works of the enigmatic Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. In his books and
papers published between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Freud had
concluded that conditions such as depression, hysteria, neurosis and even
psychosis were because of repressed emotions. His daughter, Anna Freud, a
psychologist herself, was of the view that these needed to be addressed through
psychoanalysis in order to neutralise their destructive nature.
When Jinnah
warned Gandhi in 1920, he was thinking like a modernist, advising him that the
two aforementioned movements had the potential of unleashing deep-seated
emotions that needed to be checked and replaced with a more responsible
approach towards achieving political freedoms.
Contrary to
what the anti-modernists had expected from the repeat of mass carnage during
World War II (1939-45), Western governments began to invest heavily in what Anna
Freud had been suggesting. This was based on evidence that the unabashed forces
of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany had embraced anti-modernist ideas to
romanticise the release of passions, impulses and emotions that were once
regulated by the ideals of the Enlightenment. These caused the ultimate
slaughter of millions of people who did not fit the irrational anti-modernist
context of nationalist glory and racial purity.
Anna
Freud’s work came to the forefront as governments began to envision future
polities trained to neutralise primitive impulses (the ‘id’) through a
well-developed’ ‘superego’ (moral conscience driven by reason). It was during
this period that Pakistan came into being (1947).
In his book
Qissa Aik Sadi Ka [Tale of a Century], Malik Ghulam Nabi, a former
member of Jinnah’s party, writes that, during a Muslim League convention in
December 1947, a man came up and said to Jinnah, “We had told people, Pakistan
ka matlab kya? La ilaha illallah [What does Pakistan mean? There is no god, but
God].” To this Jinnah replied, “Please sit down. Neither I nor the working
council of the party has passed such a resolution. You must have raised this
slogan to garner votes.”
Here we see
Jinnah again feeling uncomfortable with the idea of inner emotionalism
dictating external human behaviour. However, according to Adam Curtis in The
Century of the Self, when complexities of decolonisation entangled western
powers in wars thousands of miles away and their economies began to nosedive,
Anna Freud’s ideas were turned on their heads.
From the
1970s onwards, ‘spiritual’ and ‘psychological’ movements emerged that
encouraged the overt expression of repressed emotions. The self-became more
important than the whole. Politics shifted as well. According to Curtis, when
it became tougher for politicians and governments to address societal
complications arising from the new disposition and at the same time reconstruct
economies, they began to appeal to people’s inner feelings.
Emotions
related to morality, desires, self-improvement and image began to be tapped,
overriding policies that once looked to benefit societies as a whole. This
‘postmodernist’ approach, once the domain of advertising, has continued to
dominate politics, now more than ever. For example, the recent presidential
elections in the US were largely understood as a conflict between differing
points of view on cultural issues associated with one’s inner feelings about a
just society that transcends monolithic concepts such as the economy.
On the
right as well as the left/liberal sides, political and economic complications
are now explained (as opposed to being addressed) in the language of emotions
such as anxiety and fear. Political and economic failures are being blamed on
cultural, religious, racial and moral factors. Social media has given space for
everyone to caress the Freudian concept of ego (libido) through confessional
monologues about their inner selves, and the leaders have followed suit by
spending more time delving into cultural and moral issues and the self rather
than on what leaders were once expected to do. We are living in the age of the
‘id.’
Original
Headline: THE AGE OF ID
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/nadeem-f-paracha/freudian-concept-of-ego/d/123967