Psychoanalysis and Liberation Research Network
Brexit, the attack on the
young and the Ego and the Id
Maaike Engelen
Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Middlesex University
18 November, 14:00-16:00
College Building C101
This seminar revisits Freud’s The Ego and the Id
(1923), rethinking Freud’s assumption of constitutional bi-sexuality that
explains today’s sexual revolution. It is becoming more and more possible to be
a person on the basis of one’s choice of identification instead of on an
identification that is prescribed by the body, society and culture. This is a
freedom that is in line with the spirit of The Ego and the Id. Yet we
see a widespread backlash from the previous generation against these
breakthroughs that young people are realising. Brexit is
an example of this attack on the younger generation, a generation which is
being pulled towards an identification that does not belong to it.
Seminar
notes
Sigmund
Freud first published ‘The Ego and the Id’ in 1923. The study tells us
about the Oedipal development in the human psyche in a manner that is often
overlooked and forgotten about.
Freud
states in this study that all individuals are constitutionally bi-sexual and
that their love instincts are directed at both parents.
The
Oedipal development then resolves according to which identification the child
in the end chooses and this identification decides the ‘femininity or
masculinity’ of the personality, regardless of the person’s sex.
Freud
suggests in his paper as well that the whole oedipal ambivalence might be based
on constitutional bi-sexuality instead of on rivalry with the parent of the
opposite sex.
Young
people nowadays seem to confirm Freud’s assumptions in the way they have
relinquished themselves from their personality being bound to their sex or
gender.
The
whole notion of ‘femininity and masculinity’ is creatively re-negotiated and
although there can be painful confusions and painful solutions, on the whole it
seems that the young are realising what the generations before them have not.
Being
a person on the base of one’s choice of identification instead of an
identification that is prescribed by society and culture: the journey seems to
go inward not outward.
It
seems that previous generations have paved the way for this benign and
liberating development but at the same time it seems that these previous
generations are feeling partly threatened by the rapid changes ahead.
The
young, being more in touch with their instincts for love and wholesome relationships
fostered by secure attachments and secure social circumstances, also seem to
experience themselves more as world citizens. They seem to be more in touch
with the understanding that life can be based on the experience of having
enough for everyone to share without the need for competition and fights over
limited resources.
The
young seem to understand and realize that technology has developed to such an
extent that it is actually possible to realise life circumstances that are
providing enough for everyone.
It
is however their parents who have fought for these young people to feel this
safe, and their assumptions have been that there is a lack. These feelings of
lack, and their work to provide their children with enough by working hard,
competing and being focused on the outward aspects of life, has led them to
feel resentment and insecurity as to how their offspring has developed. For
this reason the leaders of this moment put their collective unbearable envy of
such experience of safety and love onto their children, whom they paradoxically
have nurtured to become so free.
The
generational conflict is played out by making the young feel in debt, literally
to make sure they will identify with the same assumptions as their
parents had ‘that there is not enough for everyone and that they have to
struggle and compete with others to survive well enough’. It is a forceful,
reactionary and unconsciously envious response to what they have given to their
children, a need for sameness and a difficulty with separation and death or the
end of an identification. It is hard to let go of what was thought to be the
one and only truth.
Brexit
stems from the same place of unconscious resentment and envy for the young and
free and it is especially young people that feel undermined and attacked by
Brexit - a choice that attacks their understanding of themselves, the world and
their sense of identity.
Brexit
and the ‘story about the Millennials’ is aimed at undermining the confidence
and self-understanding that comes from within and unites young people all over
the world. Technology has made it possible for them to understand that
basically they are all human and their identity is not bound to their country
or culture that much. The rage of being undermined by those who nurtured you to
become free is leading to extreme responses as well as feelings of
pointlessness and depression in young people.
In
my seminar I would like to think together about how the generation of the
future is under attack and forcefully pulled towards an identification that is
not belonging to them and not needed any longer either. It seems that the challenge for the future generations is
to make a jump into a psychic understanding of themselves and the world which
is not based on the assumption of scarcity. This, in combination with the
preservation of the earth, the cleaning up of the environmental mess and the
benign use of technology has the potential of transforming the face of
humanity.
It
seems that there is hope that this moment is recognized by the young generation
as much as it is understood by them to be under attack by the previous
generation.
The
question seems to be: can the young sustain their own identification and stay
confidently in touch with their constitutional bi-sexuality and their
understanding that love is not the result of rivalry or competition? Will they
be able to not react towards and identify with the death drive the previous
generation is motivated by politically?
The
more the older generation (of which I am one) can support understanding of
these dynamics and support the new generation with their different
identifications, the more they might feel understood and strengthened to act
upon their own internal worlds.
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