Psychoanalysis and Activism

When I was in training as a psychoanalyst it was generally understood that the ideal analytic stance was for the analyst to be reserved, neutral, avoidant of personally influencing the patient. This stance derived from a scientific ideal of objectivity. The scientist/analyst was to be an observer, not a participant in the object of observation.

On another point, Freudian theory illuminated psychic dynamics on some phenomena while obscuring others. Freud posited a dual-instinct theory, the two instincts Freud posited being eros/the life instinct and thanatos/the death instinct, or love/sexuality, and destructiveness. These basic instincts were subject to modification in the process of development and defense: Eros could be transformed into all sorts of positive feelings alongside raw sexuality and lust; friendliness, affection, and so on, all derived from Eros. Thanatos could be transformed into hatred, and anger and other sorts of negative feelings.

Things have changed meanwhile. The theory of psychoanalytic technique has meanwhile evolved, at least in part. With respect to analytic technique analysts, for the most part, have inherited a reserved stance in relation to the patient; in theory analysts have continued to believe that attempts to influence the patient personally makes objectivity more difficult, if not impossible. But developments in interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis have made some inclined to believe that analysts influence their patient, despite their attempts to reduce or avoid such personal influence. The analyst observes the patient in the context of an interaction with the analyst, and a particular analyst, at that.

Freud's colleague, friend, and sometime patient Sandor Ferenczi agreed. Ferenczi thought that the analyst's love for his/her patient was the most powerful curative factor in psychoanalysis, and that Freud's failure or refusal to love him made it difficult or impossible for Freud to help him. From Ferenczi's point of view, Freud's insistence on a reserved stance was precisely the form in which his influence on Ferenczi took shape, and a destructive, anti-therapeutic influence at that

Once it is accepted that analysts not only inevitably influence their patients, if only by virtue of their efforts not to influence them, the question becomes not how to avoid influencing them. but rather how to keep track of how they are influencing their patients, and how their patient reacts in the context of an interaction of mutual influence. Thus, the analytic situation is not so radically different from other human interactions in which people influence each other, in which people come to know each other in the context of an interaction with someone who thereby comes to know them.

Freud and his followers developed a theory of "psychodynamics" in which, the basic instincts interacted with "mechanisms of defense", to protect the individual from direct experience of anxiety about their raw experience of lust and murderous hatred. Thus, psychodynamic theory expanded to include all sorts of drive-derived feelings and impulses, in interaction with defenses intended to obscure and tame raw feelings and impulses.

Large Group Social Interactions: Frantz Fanon and Colonial Situations.

Once we accept that an understanding of psychoanalytic dynamics is useful in understanding human interactions in and out of the consulting room, then we can begin to apply what we have learned as analysts to the psychological dynamics of all sorts of human affairs. Let us turn, for starters, to the interactions and feelings around when one ethnic group conquers and dominates another:

Frantz Fanon was a Martinican psychiatrist who noted the feelings of humiliation and rage generated in Martinicans by the French domination of Martinique. Fanon attributed these feelings to the impact of French treatment of the Martinican people, rather primarily due to any version of Thanatos, or the death instinct. This was a major transformation of psychoanalytic theory away from drive theory and set the stage for the postcolonial perspectives which we now take for granted.

Frantz Kafka and Cockroaches

Frantz Kafka was a Czech Jew who, in the early twentieth century, wrote a novel called "Metamorphosis" in which a man named Gregor Samsa wakes up to discover that overnight he has been transformed into a cockroach. The novel outlines in detail the feelings of despair and humiliation to which he is subject as he realizes the disgust and hatred that he evokes in himself and in other people. The novel dramatizes and symbolizes the self-hatred evoked in Jews by the degrading treatment to which they were subjected by the antisemitism of their Czech neighbors as Nazism took hold in Eastern Europe.

Abhijeet Dipke and the experience of being a Dalit/cockroach in India;

In early 2026, the Government of India cancelled the NEET examination via which hundreds of thousands 0f Indian young people sought to qualify for admission to elite universities in India. When rumors arose that answers to questions on the high-stakes exam had been leaked on the internet, the exam was cancelled provoking rage in the many people who had registered to take the exam in their quest to improve their place in the world. The Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant at one point called the demonstrators "cockroaches", which elicited further massive protests all through India. Eventually, the Home Minister of India was forced to resign.

Meanwhile, an Indian graduate student named Abhijit Dipke, born as a Dalit (Harijan, formerly classified as "untouchable") was studying at Boston University. Upon hearing of these events in India, he initiated a new political party that he called "Cockroach Janta", (Cockroach people). This new political party caught on like wildfire. Taken at first as a joke, it quickly became a force in India the likes of which had not been seen since Gandhi had led the struggle for Independence from the British in the 1940s. In my view, Dipke caught on to the unspeakable: the very denigration Fanon had named in Martinique. But this time, his unconscious accurately named the lurking denigration behind the oppression build in to the Indian caste structure, so that now it could be rejected on a massive scale, by upper caste and lower caste people alike.

Activism and Psychoanalysis.

What is the moral of this story? And how is it a psychoanalytic story?

There's no one lying on a couch, no interpretations made. What there is, is a recognition of an unconscious denigration, a resonance between two unconsciouses that allows for two people to respond to each other at a deep level, No: not two people, millions of people. hundreds of millions of people. That's what makes it an activism story, triggered by communication that no one needed to go for psychoanalytic training to put into practice.

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