The Persistence of the Unconscious: Part I

At one time sophisticated, modern people recognized that many of their conscious motivations were based on deeper strata of irrational desires.  For a time sophisticated Europeans and Americans understood that our understanding of reality is filtered through a cognitive process that was inextricably intertwined with the irrational.  During the last half century, several pernicious developments in Philosophy, Academia, and Medicine have enabled the re-submergence of our understanding of the irrational. 

Philosophy gave us post-modernism, which like many philosophical ideas has value in the abstract but is all too easily twisted into a mental construct that not only effaces unpleasant reality but allows one to simultaneously pick and choose those "realities" which supports ones desires.  It enabled an intellectual construct that facilitated the free expression of one's basest drivers and emotions while consciously denying the connection to one's inner world.  In other words, one could argue that any and all forms of sexual behavior are liberating while denying the unconscious determinants of the perverse.  This has now reached the point of absurdity where some Western feminists defend such primitive practices as child marriage and female genital mutilation in the name of multi-culturalism.

Academia has done its part by imposing a template upon scientific research that enforces a rigid set of boundaries beyond which inquiry is forbidden.  At the same time Academia and the media which feeds off of its pronouncements ignore the growing body of evidence that supports some of the most important theories of Psychoanalysis which argue for enlarging the realm of personal responsibility and freedom (ie, the existence of a Dynamic Unconscious) while emphasizing those developments that diminish personal responsibility (when useful.)    For example, sexual preference and individual character traits are often explained as primarily genetic in origin (diminishing responsibility for misogynistic and violent behavior in approved and excused victim groups) while the connection between genetics, culture, and intelligence is consistently denied.

Finally, Medicine, especially organized Psychiatry hand in hand with large Pharmaceutical corporations aided and abetted by the FDA, has taken to treating troubled individuals as if their minds are black boxes form which symptoms emerge medicines are designed to control. 

The effect of these developments, along with many others (this cannot be an exhaustive list since the erasure of the unconscious has been a societal effort from the moment its codification was begun by Sigmund Freud) have led to the post-modern environment when because men nd women speak in measured tones and use rational terms, the unconscious roots of their behavior is ignored.  Yet, the bizarre events of daily life in our modern world cry out for a Psychoanalytic explanation.

According to the elites in Europe and America, with their friends and colleagues in the rest of the enlightened world represented by the sovereign states of the UN, there is no higher level of rational discourse than that august body.  After the Gaza War of 2008-09, the UN, in high dudgeon, demanded an investigation of Israeli "war crimes."  The fact that casualties were quite limited in comparison to similar conflicts elsewhere or that Hamas had been attacking Israel on a daily basis with rockets aimed at civilians (an actual war crime) was immaterial.  The UN, as is its wont, would investigate and damn Israel.  In order to assure that the report would be given the weight intended, the UN chose a prominent Jew, South African Jurist Richard Goldstone, to be the chair and author of the committee's report.  The Goldstone report was a treatise worthy of the Tzar's police; as expected it damned Israel and became part of the bedrock for the delegitimization and demonization campaign aimed at Israel being conducted around the world by Arabs and other Jew haters. 

Consider this an introduction to an examination of a terrible miscarriage of justice done for the best of conscious reasons by a man who had no idea of the unconscious determinants of his behavior.

[To understand my disgust with Richard Goldstone, you should spend some time at Understanding the Goldstone report.  Their work is excellent, high quality research by people who know what they are doing, complete with citations.  Here is their summary from the home page:

The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.

The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.

The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.

At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.

The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.

The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.

The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Tomorrow, Richard Goldstone's mea culpa.