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Neither at that time, nor indeed in my later life, did I feel any particular predilection for the career of a doctor … . Under the powerful influence of a school friendship with a boy rather my senior who grew up to be a well-known politician, I developed a wish to study law like him and to engage in social activities. (Freud, 1924/1925, p. 8).
‘All the world's a stage’ said Shakespeare (1564-1616). And we might add, the dramatis personae of the draughtsman, of the law, the implementer of law, the lawyer, the prosecutor, the judge, the mediator and the counselor bring their own history of conscious and unconscious beliefs, biases, prejudices and stereotypes.
The impact of prejudices and biases permeates each and every stage of the legal paradigm beginning with the drafting of the law; the working of the law in practice; the proceedings in court; the evaluation of evidence’, the playing out of legal propositions like “presumption of innocence” and the judicial pronouncements by courts. The positing of the unconscious as a major player in human behavior struck at the core of humans as rational beings exercising conscious choices. The unconscious comes into play not just in individual trials but also in adjudication as to the constitutional validity of laws touching upon nationalism, gender and sexuality including sexual orientation.
The judgments delivered by the courts upholding laws would on the surface be about the extent of play of fundamental rights to life, liberty, freedom of speech and expression and reasonable restrictions to be imposed on the rights on the ground of public morality, public order and national security. Moving as Freud (1905) puts it from the “manifest” to the “latent” in the context of “dream-work” (p. 160), we may find the role of factors like anxieties about annihilation, fears about partition, apprehensions about the rape and dishonor of mother and motherland or uneasiness with sexuality and homosexual attractions at play in the psyche exerti