In 1932 Albert Einstein was in Caputh (Potsdam) when he decided to write a letter to Sigmund Freud to ask him a question that disturbed him greatly: “Is there a way to free human beings from the fatality of war?”
There was a year to go before Nazism took power in Germany, but just a few months later after writing Freud, the physicist decided to set sail for the United States, where he would go into exile given the situation of political instability that had broken out in Europe.
That epistolary exchange about society and its contradictions, our self-destructive tendencies, soulless bureaucracies, ideal impulses and passions are still as current in their time as they are now.
Power, submission and suffering… Einstein’s main concerns
Einstein wrote “it is known that, due to technical progress, the existence of civilized humanity depends on this question; and yet passionate efforts to resolve it have failed alarmingly to date. I believe that also among human beings who deal practically and professionally with this problem there is a desire, resulting from a certain feeling of helplessness, to question people who, due to their usual scientific activity, maintain the necessary distance from all life aspects”.
Recognizing his limitations in this area because “The usual orientation of my thought does not allow me to form an idea about the depths of human willing and feeling”, Einstein asked Freud to elucidate “The question using his deep knowledge of the life of human instincts.”
“I am confident that you will be able to point us towards educational methods that to some extent move away from politics in order to remove psychological obstacles. The inexperienced person in psychological subjects intuits the existence of these obstacles, but he does not know how to assess their correlations and their variability”.
In his letter, Einstein revealed one of the forces that opposed peace and paralyzed any effort to reach an understanding between people: “The need for power of the dominant sector resists in all States a limitation of their rights of sovereignty. This need for power is often fed by a desire for material and economic power from another sector.”
“I am referring above all to the small but determined group of those who, active in all States and indifferent to social considerations and limitations, see in war, the manufacture and trade of arms an opportunity for personal advantage, that is, to expand their sphere of personal power.”
Immediately afterwards, the physicist asked himself: “How is it possible that the aforementioned minority can put the masses at the service of their desires, if they, in the event of a war, will only obtain suffering and losses?” And later he tried to answer: “The most suitable answer is: the dominant minority has, above all, the school, the press and almost always also the religious organizations under its control. With these means, they dominates and directs the feelings of the masses, while turning them into their instruments.”
However, his own response does not completely convince him and he returns to the charge: “How is it possible that the masses allow themselves to be inflamed until they reach delirium and self-destruction through the aforementioned resources? The answer can only be: in human beings lies the need to hate and destroy. This predisposition remains latent in times when normality prevails and manifests itself only in exceptional circumstances; it can, however, be easily aroused and intensified until it reaches collective psychosis.”
Then he posed his last question to Freud: “Is it possible to direct the psychic development of human beings in such a way that they become more resistant to psychoses of hatred and destruction?” And he pointed out that “By no means am I thinking here only of the so-called uneducated masses. According to my experience, it is above all the so-called intellectuals who succumb more easily to disastrous collective suggestions, since they do not usually have direct contact with reality, but rather experience it through its most comfortable and complete form, that of printed paper”.
The complex nexus between power and violence
Freud replied to Einstein from Vienna, barely a month later, in September 1932. Six years later, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Freud, as a Jew and founder of Psychoanalysis, was considered an enemy of the Third Reich. His books were publicly burned, so he and his family suffered intense harassment. Although he was reluctant to leave Vienna, he was forced to flee the country when it became clear that his life and the lives of those he loved were in danger.
Freud began by alluding to the link between law and power because he considered that it was the “correct starting point” to address the issue of wars, although he proposed “replacing the word ‘power’ with ‘violence'” because despite the fact that it was harsher, it was also more suitable. He stated that “Today law and violence are opposites for us, but it is easy to show that one originated from the other.”
He went on to explain that “Conflicts of interest between men are resolved, many times, through the use of violence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man should not be excluded. Although in his case there are still conflicts of opinions, which reach the highest degree of abstraction and seem to require another technique to be resolved”.
Freud explained that “In the beginning, in a small horde of human beings, it was muscular strength that decided to whom something belonged or whose will should be obeyed. Soon the muscular strength was increased and replaced by the use of instruments: whoever has the best weapons or uses them with more skill wins. With the introduction of weapons, mental superiority begins to take the place of brute muscular force, although the ultimate purpose of the fight remains the same: one of the parties, due to the damage they receive or the paralysis of their forces, it will be constrained to lay down its claim or its antagonism”.
Freud believed that states that feel strong believe they have the right to impose violence. He affirmed that “Law is the power of a community. It continues to be a form of violence ready to be directed against any individual who confronts it; works with the same means, pursues the same ends; the difference only resides, really and effectively, in that it is no longer the violence of an individual that is imposed, but that of the community”.
In part, this violence is explained by inequalities since, after all, “The laws are made by the rulers and for their benefits, and the rights granted to those who are subjected are few.” He also attributes it to the conflicting drives that exist within each one of us, Eros (pleasure) and Thánatos (destruction), destruction and self-preservation, which feed each other and “cannot act isolated one from the other”.
For this reason, he concludes “I do not offer any perspective to try to uproot the aggressive inclinations of men. It is clear that it is not a question of completely eliminating the inclination of men to attack but of trying to divert it enough so that it should not find its expression in war.”
Love, empathy, education and freedom of thought: the “weapons” that Freud proposed to avoid war
Although Freud was not particularly optimistic in his letter, he did share with Einstein some ways to contain and reduce the self-destructive impulses of individuals and communities.
His idea was to appeal to Eros as a factor that unites men and a compensatory force. His idea today could be translated as “make love, not war”. Eros is not only the drive for life, it is also the search for pleasure 360 degrees and the ability to enjoy.
Freud proposed that men should “Create bonds like those with a love object, but without sexual goals.” It was also necessary to promote the “Feeling that is produced by identification. Everything that establishes substantive community relations between men will provoke those common feelings, those identifications”.
When we identify with the others, we are able to put ourselves in their place and stop seeing them as otherness to understand that, deep down, they are the same as us, then it is difficult to feed animosity and hatred, so it is also difficult to turn them into an enemy to kill. In those cases, rapprochement is encouraged more than distance, bridges are built instead of building barricades.
Freud also pointed out that educating in free thought was essential to prevent people from succumbing to the call of the drums of war. “Everything that promotes the development of culture also works against war.”
It is necessary to “Take greater care, than what we’ve done up to now, in the education of a superior class of men of autonomous thought, who cannot be intimidated […] It is not necessary to demonstrate that the abuses of the powers of the State and the prohibition of free thinking decreed by the Church do not favor such a generation.”
“The ideal would be, of course, a community of men who had submitted their instinctual life to the dictatorship of reason. Nothing else would be capable of producing a more perfect and resistant union between men, even renouncing the ties of feeling between them. But with a high probability it is a utopian hope”.
Source:
Einstein, A. & Freud, S. (2001) ¿Por qué la guerra? Barcelona: Minúscula.
