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To psychoanalyze society is to identify the unconscious sources of its cultural formations. For any ideology or institution we pose the question: “Why does it exist?” To understand an element of culture one seeks to uncover the psychic function it provides or performs. An ideology or institution comes into being and is embraced and perpetuated insofar as it does something (psychologically) for individuals within that society. Culture is a social construction. The question posed by psychoanalysis is that of the source of, or motivation underlying, the creation and perpetuation of specific cultural forms. For each ideology or institution we ask: What is its meaning, the psychological work it performs for members of that society?
Everything begins with the self. The fundamental illusion or resistance governing social and historical inquiry is the fantasy of the existence of a world “out there” separate from the human mind. What does “hegemony” mean? That some idea in the “external world” has been internalized to the extent that it controls our mind and body. Howard Stein posed the question: “Why can't we walk away from it?” Hegemony is the other side of the coin of attachment. The “dream of culture” (Stein) is the fantasy of “forces” outside the self that cannot be resisted, the existence of a realm of reality that is other than a human creation. We experience “society” as if it is hovering over us. The question is why we invest humanly constructed entities with such power.
Freud put forth the idea of “psychic determinism” as the fundamental principle permitting one to analyze dreams, slips of the tongue, and psychosomatic symptoms, proposing that there are no accidents in the life of the mind. Our unconscious mental life is the source of the images we dream at night, the mistakes and blunders of our everyday life, and the pains in our bodies. To psychoanalyze culture is to extend the principle of psychic determinism. We hypothesize that cultural f