Essay Five:
Freud and Eichmann
In The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud presents the fundamental theories of the conscious and unconscious. Freud defines repression as the ethical mechanism that continuously turns down the evil ambitions. Freud’s psyche model suggests that repression is critical in maintaining rational personality because society expects moral and ethical actions. In Freud’s lecture hall analogy, these repressed ambitions would be driven out of the consciousness, but remain hidden inside the unconscious until an opportunity to become active, or until a psychoanalyst releases the emotions behind such ambition. Freud also believes that the dormant, repressed wishes have the ability to turn into positive motivations in the form of sublimation, and it would naturally generate impulses to do good rather than evil. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt follows Adolf Eichmann’s troubling youth to becoming one of the main organizers of the Holocaust under the totalitarian state of the Nazi regime. Arendt demonstrates how the Nazi’s legal system encouraged individuals to mindlessly follow orders of the state, which assisted Eichmann’s repression of his temptation to be ethical. Under such deceit, Eichmann sublimates to his ambition to prove his worth and convinces himself that he should continue to follow orders and laws to benefit his community and gain recognition from the respectable society. Arendt’s arguments suggest that the totalitarian state of the Nazi regime acted as the inverted version of Freud’s psyche model, and its purpose was to make criminal acts normal and honorable.
Freud describes repression as the mechanism that drags individuals away from their painful memories and unacceptable wishes. Freud defines the conscious as the recallable memories and ideas, and the unconscious as the container for dormant information. The idea of repression first appears when Freud discovers, “the emotions developed in the pathogenic situation were prevented from escaping normally, and that the essence of the sickness lies in the fact that these ‘imprisoned’ emotions undergo a series of abnormal changes” (SF 214). Freud argues that the root cause of his patients’ illnesses can be traced back to a pathogenic experience, and the associated memories get trapped within the conscious. Without proper relief, the patients cannot escape the experiences, and their associated memories grow more thirsty and violent. In order to avoid the pain attached to the pathogenic experience and its associated memories, an internal force eradicates memories from the conscious. Freud explains, “These same forces, which in the present situation as resistances opposed the emergence of the forgotten ideas into consciousness, must themselves have caused the forgetting, and repressed from consciousness the pathogenic experiences” (SF 217). As a result, Freud defines repression as the process in which the conscious memories and ideas are moved to the unconscious to be forgotten, and resistance as the gatekeeper that prevents recollection of memories or ideas that live in the unconscious.
Freud notices that repression can be applied not only to unwanted memories, but also primitive, pleasurable desires. Freud states, “a wish had been aroused, which was in sharp opposition to the other desires of the individual. And was not capable of being reconciled with the ethical, aesthetic and personal pretensions of the patient’s personality” (SF 217). Freud proposes that humans naturally wish for pleasure—something often forbidden, but the path to fulfill pleasure is blocked by the morals, guilt, and societal rules. The internal conflict between the desire for pleasure and the morals are forces that both expect the individual to fulfill. Freud concludes,
The incompatibility of the idea in question with the ‘ego’ of the patient was the motive of the repression, the ethical and other pretensions of the individual were the repressing forces. The presence of the incompatible wish, or the duration by the repression had given rise to a high degree of mental pain; this pain was avoided by the repression. (SF 217)
Freud’s model proposes that repression occurs when the unacceptable wishes clash with their personality and societal standards. Therefore, individuals often repress their desire for unacceptable pleasure and support morality during the conflict because society expects them to be moral and ethical. If the individual chooses to repress societal expectations to fulfill their pleasurable desires, they will only enjoy the sense of satisfaction temporarily and then be punished by the society for breaking its rules. After the individual considers their desires for pleasure not acceptable by the rules of society or even their own personality, they repress their desires and make themselves unaware of their existence to avoid the pain of unfulfillment.
Freud’s lecture hall analogy demonstrates the role of psychoanalysts, and how they can help patients overcome their resistances and unmask the repression. Freud describes a scenario where he is lecturing in a lecture hall with a full audience, “there is an individual who is creating a disturbance, and, by his ill-bred laughing, talking, by scraping his feet, distracts my attention from my task” (SF 218). The lecture hall resembles the conscious—the ideas and memories that individuals are aware of and able to recall. Freud and the lecturer represents the normal personality and behavior that is dictated by the conscious. The disturber acts as the primitive impulses and pleasurable desires, and all the actions demonstrate the path to fulfill such pleasure. Hypothetically, the person’s disruption would permeate through the entire lecture hall if there is no opposition; it might encourage other people to create disturbances and cause extreme and uncontrollable actions. Freud’s model would not tolerate the permeation of such behavior; he argues that the conscious would stand in opposition at the very early stage when the disturbance is interrupting. Freud states, “I explain that I cannot go on with my lecture under these conditions, and thereupon several strong men among you get up, and, after a short struggle, eject the disturber of the peace from the hall. He is now ‘repressed’” (SF 218). Because the primitive wishes interrupted the personality or the lecturer, the morals give motivation to repression and kick the wishes out of the way. But in order to prevent interruptions from reoccurring, there must be a force that prevents that disturber from reentering. Freud suggests, “the gentlemen who have executed my suggestion take their chairs to the door and establish themselves there as a ‘resistance’ to keep up the repression.” (SF 218) Freud argues that even though the repressed wishes can be driven out of consciousness and memory, they still exist in the unconscious waiting to become active again. Freud proposes the only solution is for the psychoanalysts to, “take upon himself the role of peacemaker and mediator. He would speak with the rowdy on the outside, and then turn to us with the recommendation that we let him in again, provided he would guarantee to behave himself better.” (SF 219). The role of the psychoanalyst is to negotiate between the conscious and unconscious ideas by assisting patients to associate words with their repressed ideas. By talking to the patients, psychoanalysts could guide them to overcome the force of resistance and discover the pathogenic experience that caused the repression.
Freud believes that some decisions might bring repressed wishes to a happy end in the form called sublimation. Freud defines sublimation as, “the rejection may be recognized as rightly motivated, and the automatic and therefore insufficient mechanism of repression can be reinforced by the higher, more characteristically human mental faculties.” (SF 219) Freud previously concludes that repression is a process in which the individual purposely rejects primitive wishes and instincts from their consciousness because they are either too painful to be conscious of or unacceptable by society and morality. But repression would no longer be needed if the individual transforms their impulses to a higher, more fruitful ambition. In this case, the individual manipulates their primitive wishes into positive motivations and turns their unacceptable desires into a constructive action that is acceptable by society and their own personality. Freud believes the process of sublimation occurs when, “Either the personality of the patient may be convinced that he has been wrong in rejecting the pathogenic wish, and he may be made to accept it either wholly or in part; or this wish may itself be directed to a higher goal which is free from objection.” (SF 219) Based on Freud’s discoveries, individual’s impulses that face no objections would remain in the conscious and find a path to its fulfillment; they would be accepted by the conscious because there is no moral or societal opposition. Since sublimation is a method that fulfills primitive impulses in a way that is acceptable by the rules of society, it is then highly encouraged by the society. The structure of our current society expects citizens to behave and follow the law while preventing and punishing harmful and dangerous desires. Under sublimation, citizens are happily motivated by their wish for pleasure while they contribute their production to the society; everyone benefits from this system.
Eichmann’s pathogenic experiences paved his way to become the organizer of the Holocaust. Adolf Eichmann was born into a promising family: Eichmann’s father was an ex-accountant and an official for the Tramways and Electricity Company. Eichmann had four siblings, but he was the only one facing early misfortunes. According to Arendt, “only Adolf, the eldest, it seems, was unable to finish high school, or even to graduate from the vocational school for engineering into which he was then put.” (HA 28) Eichmann’s unsuccessful academic life within the promising family added a lot of pressure onto Eichmann; this is the pathogenic experience that made recognition and accomplishment his most pleasurable desire. Arendt claims,
From a humdrum life without significance and consequence the wind had blown him into History, as he understood it, namely, into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him—already a failure in the eyes of his social class, of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well—could start from scratch and still make a career. (HA33)
Even after his academic failures, Eichmann continued to struggle with his career before joining the Nazi Party; his desire for accomplishment was never fulfilled, and it was never repressed because there is no moral nor societal oppositions. The Nazi regime presented Eichmann with an opportunity for him to accomplish something; his compliance to the regime was simply motived by the desire to become someone special and respectable for the first time. Arendt hypothesizes, “he might still have preferred—if anybody asked him—to be hanged as Obersturmbannführer a.D.(in retirement) rather than living out his life quietly and normally as a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company.”(HA 34) From Eichmann’s point of view, organizing the Holocaust might’ve sacrificed millions of innocent lives, but it successfully fulfilled his desire for accomplishment and got him the recognition that he’s been after ever since he was a child; it was the greatest gift that terminated his life-long frustrations.
The legal system during the Nazi regime resembles an inverted version of Freud’s psyche model. From Eichmann’s perspective, Arendt claims, “under the then existing Nazi legal system he had not done anything wrong, that what he was accused of were not crimes but ‘acts of state,’ over which no other state has jurisdiction…” (HA 21) The Nazi legal system inverted the normal legal system and put its citizens in a complete double bind. The normal legal system defines what the society deems as acceptable and punishable behaviors, and it is used as a strong moral reference when individuals face an internal conflict between their pleasurable wishes and their moral personality. In Freud’s terms, the normal legal system assists individuals in repressing unacceptable wishes, and it is a system that expects people to act ethically and harmlessly after repressing the impulses. On the other hand, the Nazi legal system states whatever is good for the party is legal; the law defines new moralities that only asks its citizens to follow whatever order the party demands. Under the system, Arendt argues that citizens, “lost the need to feel anything at all. This was the way things were, this was the new law of the land, based on the Führer’s order…” (HA 135) The only ethical decision for the citizens is to comply with the orders and carry out actions on behalf of the state’s interests; any opposition force that questions the orders is unacceptable and therefore must be repressed. Whenever the order bring forth ethical dilemmas, the temptation for ethical approach is immediately opposed by the law to comply with orders, and the temptation for ethical approach is then repressed to satisfy morality to meet the expectations of the Nazi regime. Eichmann calls the blind obedience as the “obedience of corpses” because there is nothing expected from him besides mindlessly following the party’s orders, and this is exactly what the totalitarian state wanted. Arendt further explains,
Their case rested on the assumption that the defendant, like all “normal persons,” must have been aware of the criminal nature of this acts, and Eichmann was indeed normal insofar as he was “no exception within the Nazi regime.” However, under the conditions of the Third Reich only “exceptions” could be expected to react “normally” (HA 26).
The normal person defined by the Freud’s system is considered to be the ethical and moral being—they are aware of the criminal and harmful nature of their acts, and actively represses their impulses to act ethical and harmless; any Nazi leader like Eichmann would definitely be viewed as unethical and unacceptable under normal standards. In the Nazi legal system, the normal person is anyone who follows the order and the rules of the party, and individuals are expected to repress the temptation to be ethical if that is what it takes to fulfill the orders. The Nazi legal system is an inverted version of Freud’s system.
Eichmann’s desire for accomplishment transformed into sublimation. Eichmann’s pathogenic experiences in his troubled youth generated a strong desire for accomplishment and recognition. With the Nazi regime in place, this faced no opposition. Even though being part of the Nazi regime is essentially inevitable for Germans because of their legal system, Eichmann’s effort to become an Obersturmbannführer and organizer of the Holocaust was motived entirely by sublimation. During his meeting with Nazi leaders at the Wannsee Conference, he realizes,
not only Hitler, nor only Heydrich or the “sphinx” Muller, not just the S.S. or the Party, but the elite of the good old Civil Service were vying and fighting with each other for the honor of taking the lead in these “bloody” matters. “At that moment, I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt.” Who was he to judge? Who was he “to have [his] own thoughts in this matter”? Well, he was neither the first nor the last to be ruined by modesty. (HA 114)
Eichmann was surrounded by respectable and successful men, and for anyone who is thirsty for recognition, this is the perfect opportunity for him to be part of that respectable group. He was so ambitious to prove his worth by contributing to the society and therefore accepted any order from them that could recognize him as a valuable member of the respectable group in the Nazi regime. From Eichmann’s perspective, “whatever he did he did, as far as he could see, as a law- abiding citizen. He did his duty, as he told the police and the court over and over again; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law” (HA 135). His desire for recognition rightfully motivated him to be a hard and law-abiding worker, and his contributions were very beneficial to the Nazi regime; his role fulfilled his pleasurable desires while his actions was acceptable by his society. For Eichmann, the opportunity was too hard to give up because it is extremely rare to fulfill desires while following the rules of society; his desires transformed into sublimation under the Nazi regime and made him a machine for the Nazi leaders, even if his job required shipping people to their deaths by the trainload.
Freud’s psyche model proposes that individuals repress their painful memories or primitive wishes to avoid internal conflict with their morals and personality. In his lecture hall example, the primitive ideas were kicked out of the conscious and resisted by the conscious to ensure peace and later mediated by psychoanalysts. Freud also suggests that repression has the ability to transform into a righteous ambition called sublimation. Freud’s model suggests that society expects people to repress impulses so they can act ethically and harmlessly. Arendt uses Eichmann’s frustrating childhood to unfold his compliance to the Nazi regime. Arendt proposes that the totalitarian state of the Nazi regime is a complete inversion of the Freudian model, and it expects people to repress the temptation to be ethical in order to follow orders. While Eichmann cannot escape the laws of Nazi regime, his effort to become a leader of the party was driven by sublimation, which fulfilled his pleasure and benefited the Nazi regime.