Abstract
Recently, the fears and violent fantasies of some of the wealthy elite in the United States have become public. In this article, I claim that these fantasies, which emerge from and are linked to neoliberal capitalistic narratives, are signifiers of a systemic and often hidden social reality of class relations. Moreover, they are social-cultural symptoms of unconscious material, dynamics, and communications taking place between classes. I use the concepts of projective identification and enactment to tease out the psychosocial dynamics and communications of these class-based fantasies and consider briefly the implications of this perspective.
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Notes
American Spectator, http://spectator.org/issues/2014/jun, accessed 1 Aug 2014.
A caution is needed here. Freud (and others, e.g., Coles 1975; Meissner 1992) recognized the danger and problems of using concepts torn “from the sphere in which they have originated and been evolved” (1930, p. 144). And yet, Freud knew that unconscious motivations and meanings exist not only in the clinical setting but also in the cultural and personal artifacts of everyday life. My aim is neither to depict definitively the collective unconscious material and dynamics associated with the fears and fantasies of the wealthy nor to suggest a connection between the analytic dyad and class relations but rather to offer a heuristic perspective that can have implications for responding to these fears and fantasies.
Charles Taylor (2007) broadly defines a social imaginary as the “way contemporaries imagine the societies they inhabit and sustain” (p. 6). More particularly, he notes that a social imaginary is “broader and deeper than intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality. . . . I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (p. 23). A group’s social imaginary “makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy” (p. 23). Social imaginaries, Taylor writes further, provide a sense of the moral order and are “more than just a grasp on the norms underlying our social practice. . . . There also must be a sense . . . of what makes these norms realizable” (p. 28). Put another way, social imaginaries possess a moral ethos that justifies aims or goals and methods or sets of practices for achieving or realizing the group’s ends.
I have placed the term “rational” in quotes to suggest the underlying illusion that the so-called market or those involved in the market make rational, objective decisions. Any casual observer of the rises and falls of the stock market notes the presence of greed, fear, hubris, anxiety, and anger, all of which play a large role in making “rational” decisions, which Alan Greenspan only realized after the financial collapse of 2008 (King 2013). I would add here that the notion of “rational” vis-à-vis capitalism refers to a kind of rationalism that is associated with the advancement of each individual’s self-interest. It is instrumental and individualistic. This is decidedly different from a rationalism associated with making decisions based on the interests and needs of others (Gergen 1994).
Hendricks (2011) points out that John Maynard Keynes dismantled this claim, indicating that “supply cannot be counted on to create its own demand” (p. 152).
Nelson (2001) provides an interesting history of the proponents of capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and their religious fervor in preaching the good news of capitalism. It is interesting that this accompanied a growing decline, as Lyotard (1999) pointed out, of a religious grand narrative for ordering social life.
Harvey (2005) argues that the power and influence of neoliberal ideas came to fruition in the 1970s/80s with the proliferation of conservative think tanks, as well as with the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. See also Dumenil and Levy (2011); Jones (2012), and Klein (2007) on the rise and influence of neoliberalism and the process of globalization through varied means of force and coercion by Western powers.
Hedges and Sacco (2012) point out that of the industrialized nations, the United States has the lowest social mobility (p. iv)—a clear consequence of neoliberal capitalism’s social inequality. Indeed, Piketty’s (2014) exhaustive research indicates that the 21st century’s capital will take the form of patrimonial capitalism—the few will inherit the wealth, not create it. These and other authors show that meritocracy is a myth and, in some cases, a fantasy.
There are two points to be made here. First, projective identification as a primitive defense means that it appears early in human development. Subsequent development of psychological capacities for organizing experience indicates that this primitive defense becomes more sophisticated in adult life. Second and relatedly, although it is a primitive form of communication, the presence of projective identification in adult life does not necessarily indicate psychopathology or regression (Bion 1957; Tansey and Burke 1989, p. 43). Given this, I also understand projective identification as a mode of communication that is best seen as operating on a continuum of intensity (see McWilliams 1994). In adult life, projective identification is often contextual and dependent on stressful circumstances that the person emotionally handles through this defense. As McWilliams (1994) noted, “There are numerous subtle and benign ways that the process (projective identification) operates in everyday life irrespective of pathology” (p. 112).
“Full Show: The conscience of a compassionate conservative,” July 25, 2014, Moyers & Company, http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-the-conscience-of-a-compassionate-conservative/ , accessed 22 Aug 2014.
A friendly critic may point out that there is also cooperation evident in neoliberal capitalism. I agree, but a society that adheres to the notion of people acting on their own individual “rational” self-interests will be a society that exists and survives by virtue of a powerful state that manages the conflict between the disparate self-interests of its citizens. Also, capital is not limitless; entrepreneurs seek to garner as much as possible and, in so doing, compete with others. Competition is based in conflict, which may or may not be violent or destructive.
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LaMothe, R. Plutocratic Fears and Fantasies: Projective Identification and Enactment in a Market Society. Pastoral Psychol 65, 61–77 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0659-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0659-z