Psychoanalytic Intervention in the Public Sphere

“The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.”

In September 2014, I was contacted by the Atlantic Monthly. They were doing a piece on the 75th anniversary of the death of Freud. The Monthly wanted to know what the psychoanalytic community was doing to commemorate the occasion. To my chagrin, there had been nothing planned. We had missed an opportunity.

Then I thought, “Is this the only relevant story about Freud, the anniversary of his death?” It sounded like a variation of the oft-written article, “Is Psychoanalysis Dead?”

Disheartened, I called my friend and fellow psychoanalyst Tracy Morgan. Tracy and I had spent much of 2014 thinking about the relevance of psychoanalysis today. We were both overwhelmed by the endless string of human violence: the massacre in Santa Barbara, deaths in Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, the deaths of unarmed black men, reports of campus sexual assaults, beheadings. In addition to the violence we saw in the world around us, we were troubled by the amount of denial of U.S. aggression, both racial and military.

It seemed imperative we make a contribution from the perspective of psychoanalysis to the conversation about violence. We are clinicians who work with traumatized people of all races, some of whom have been harmed by violence and some of whom are violent themselves. Managing violent impulses is one of the most difficult challenges faced by all people.

We thought a possible psychoanalytic intervention would be to remind the public aggression is a universal problem, not just the problem of Islamic militants or a problem of mental illness in Santa Barbara. We, as individuals, but more importantly as a civilization, struggle with aggressive impulses everyday, and denying this fact only fans the flames of aggressive acts.

The Last Word on Aggression

In order to accomplish this task, we decided to revisit Freud's classic essay on the human propensity towards violence, Civilization and Its Discontents. For us, Freud remains the last word on aggression. Our idea began as a simple one: We would host a marathon reading. We chose Judson Memorial Church as our location because of Judson's history with social justice and activism, and because Washington Square Park, the park on which Judson resides, was active almost daily with protests over the recent shooting of Michael Brown and chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Tracy and I sent emails to friends and colleagues who we thought might be interested in participating in such an event. In the end, we wrangled up a ragtag group of psychoanalysts, artists, clergy, actors and activists who convened once a week in the church basement to work on the event. We called ourselves Freud OutLoud! and were excited to bring Freud's words to the public. We settled on the first Saturday after the new year to mount our event. We had three months to make this happen.

Off and running with our idea of a marathon reading (a lectern, multiple readers, and a reading of the text in its entirety), we soon concluded this was not an event that would garner attention. We wanted, as psychoanalysts, to make a statement to the public—not just to read Freud. We were worried a marathon reading was too academic, too for-analysts-by-analysts. To engage the public, we needed an event.

We decided to enlist the help of graduate students in theater. We found the amazing Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li, an NYU performance studies student. Li was on fire about Civilization and Its Discontents. He thought the text spoke powerfully to the current social and political climate. He came into his first meeting with a beaten up, dogeared text with notes in the margins. Instead of a dry reading, he suggested a performance piece where chapters would be differently staged throughout the church hall and read simultaneously. Li experienced the text as fragmented and not following a linear argument. For this reason, he saw no need for the chapters to be read in order. So, he suggested presenting the entire work in a fragmented way.

Chapter and Verse

Each chapter was staged simply in a different section of the performance space. For instance, Chapter 1, “Religion” presented a person reading at a lectern under a stained glass window. Chapter 3, “Cleanliness and Order” presented two people reading, one in German, one in English, one standing still, one walking along a grid on the floor. Chapter 4, “Love and Necessity” was staged with two people at a long banquet table adorned with inaccessible chocolate cakes and goodies reading, one in English, one in German, reflecting that food is man's most basic necessity. Chapter 6, “Love and Death” involved a single tape recorder, surrounded by mirrors, which played a reading of the chapter. Onlookers were invited to confront their mortality. Chapter 7, “Authority” presented a reader inside a giant birdcage facing a guard outside.

We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. What started out as a simple reading had turned into an enormous event with a production team, event coordinators, stage managers, lighting technicians, reader coordinators, marketing, outreach, press releases, food vendors, props coordinators, program designers, and a fundraising arm.

The event lasted six hours. Civilization and Its Discontents was read in its entirety, fragmented, twice. Over 600 people attended the event. Repeat: Over 600 people attended the event. We were completely amazed at the turnout. We received press coverage in the New York Times, Daily News, New York Magazine and Time Out. Our readers included Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham, philosopher and author Simon Critchley, professor and author Stanley Aronowitz, writer Nick Flynn, journalist Elizabeth Rubin, psychoanalysts, actors, academics, architects, clergy and war veterans.

The event was dizzying, moving and powerful, almost dreamlike: an experience to which one needed to take time to orient oneself, to take note of one's feelings and to interpret its effect. The event was challenging and required work from the audience. As chapters were read simultaneously, the audience members came in close, listened, then moved on, where and when they chose throughout the two-levels of the performance space. Some could not tolerate the frustration and left early. Others engaged with the event and felt richly rewarded. People read along with their own old, tattered copies from college. Others bought a copy of the text at the event. People stayed for hours.

There is something powerful in the spoken word. As psychoanalysts, speech is the material in which we work. To hear a text being read out loud is a different experience from reading it silently to oneself. I did not expect to be so surprised by the different voices, big and small, their varying inflections and emphases. It allowed me to hear Freud in a way I had never heard him before. Some readers were angry and dramatic, others were serious and contemplative. The cacophony created by all of the voices—in English and German, male and female, angry and reverent—reverberated throughout the cavernous hall, creating a sense of unsettling incivility.

Readers' Reflections

The audience members were not the only people moved by the event. The readers also found the event to be powerful. We asked them to say a few words as to why they agreed to be part of such a reading. Michael Cunningham said, “Freud has been required reading for as long as I can remember He matters to me as much as do writers like Tolstoy, Fitzgerald and Woolf.” Dale Peck, novelist, critic, and columnist, said, “Civilization and Its Discontents reminds us it's sometimes necessary to step back and realize the problems we confront are symptoms of a tension that is as old as civilization itself, and unless we address the underlying condition, we will never cure the disease.” “To read Civilization and its Discontents in 2015 is to bear witness to the deadly violence whose daily presence is all too familiar to us and imagine the conditions that might provide a loving counterweight to that violence,” added Simon Critchley.

And finally, Micah Bucey, community minister of the arts at Judson Memorial Church, who was instrumental in helping us mount this event, said, “I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself and others of innate human goodness, but this is meaningless without acknowledging the destructive and violent impulses we all feel. Civilization and Its Discontents explores what it means to be human, warts and all. In our current crises of human destruction, we need honest exploration now more than ever.”

As for Freud OutLoud!, Tracy and I have spoken about mounting other Freud readings. The Future of an Illusion keeps coming to mind, but we both agree the time of Civilization and Its Discontents is not over It needs to be repeated and cannot be overemphasized. Our hope is other institutes, other cities, will produce similar events. In fact, we were very happy to hear the Freud Museum in London took our lead and staged a marathon reading of Civilization and Its Discontents.