The psyche in civilization

The singular work of Norbert Elias (1897-1990) bears the mark of the great classic undertakings of the social sciences driven by a single theoretical ambition: to make intelligible the collective issues and individual troubles in a century disrupted by history. Thinking about the social bond is therefore not reduced to the attempt to delimit a discipline as the work of Émile Durkheim suggests. It is rather a matter of setting methodological requirements in order to structure the same theoretical space. It is therefore perfectly pointless to ask whether Karl Marx, Max Weber or Norbert Elias are or not, or to what degree, sociologists, philosophers or historians. Regardless, they were above all preoccupied with essential problems to be resolved, putting forward very imperfect models of intelligibility (false, incomplete and unsatisfactory), but which still give food for thought today. This is the case, for example, of the questionable model of civilization of morals that Norbert Elias proposed in 1939 to understand the sociogenesis of the sense of modesty. Thanks to the patient work of Marc Joly and his team of translators, this collection entitled Beyond Freud judiciously brings together five texts developed by Norbert Elias between 1950 and 1990. From various angles, it confronts the same fundamental problem: how to understand the internal relationship between individual and society ? Or, more precisely, to put it in the terms of a flagship movement in American anthropology of the 1940s also in dialogue with the work of Sigmund Freud, what tools to use to grasp together Culture and Personality ?

An emotional economy

To solve this problem of Culture and PersonalityNorbert Elias does not simply import or apply the methods of psychology or psychoanalysis to resolve a sociological problem (eg socialization). He begins by criticizing the metaphysical presuppositions of psychological theories. He thus prepares the ground for the introduction of concepts that he has previously developed to build his own theoretical model while mobilizing a series of requirements that he imposes on the discussion. Three types of demands, presenting strong internal coherence, can easily be identified: (i.) the fight against abstract oppositions ; (ii.) the development of an intelligibility model “ dynamic » and (iii.) the concern for synthesis or interdisciplinarity by “ nesting » (pp. 47-48). In his 1939 work, Norbert Elias was concerned with a synthesis between history and sociology. In this volume, he attempts to think of a possible synthesis or combination between sociology and psychology on the basis of his work revealing an affective economy of relationships with oneself and others. This objective justifies the systematic use of an intellectual weapon to “ double trigger “.

Initially, Elias leads a tenacious struggle against all abstract oppositions. Thus, continuing his criticism of dualism “ individual / society », he severely attacks the opposition between person and environment which subordinates to the idea of ​​an interiority by nature universal, a set of secondary social variables. One of the most tenacious social representations, circulated in literature in particular, is the idea of ​​a homo claususan entity disengaged from its social context (p. 78). In the same vein, he criticizes the opposition between unconscious individual drive (p. 170-73) and culture by showing that the latter term is based in Freud on a negative vision (the thesis of repression) centered on the individual and his sexual urges. This last conception is also reductive: because it is difficult to reduce a person to a single “ valence » (pp. 64-66). This chemical metaphor (ie ability to make a connection) directly targets Freud who only understands attachment through a single valence (sexuality).

Secondly, Elias proposes dialectical and dynamic concepts such as those of “ configuration ” Or “ of interdependence “. For him, “ civilization » is a descriptive concept which does not value, despite the ambiguity it contains, an evolutionary model. Under Elias’s pen, it is a process without beginning (p. 145), nor planning (p. 110), but directional (p. 155, note 17). From this perspective, it is a question of understanding both the complexity of a structure and these mutations whatever its scale. Social structures are processes and social processes reconfigure structures. However, if the social structure changes, the personality structure is also affected. Psychosomatic disorders or “ period troubles » (p. 126) would then be linked to social changes (p. 114). Changes in relationships with oneself and others would shape a new emotional economy.

Moral economies

By focusing on the social regulation of emotions, the heart of “ process of civilization », Elias reintroduces history at the heart of the mind or the psychic apparatus. This is how he can propose a “ sociological diagnosis ” of “ period troubles ” For “ complete » medical diagnosis of psychosomatic disorders. However, it cannot truly explain why this individual and not all individuals of the same class with the same personality structure can be affected by this “ disorder ” or, even more difficult, to explain the persistence of a “ disorder » while the supposed pathogenic social structure has disappeared as well as its medical diagnosis ? What is more, the thesis of the malaise in civilization presides over the birth of social psychiatry. It allows us to criticize the impact of social transformations on the state of mental health of populations. And since the French revolution, nothing is going well ! This criticism, far from being subversive, is based on a romantic, declinist and reactionary vision of modernity. It is moreover as moralists of their time that contemporary psychoanalysts also propose to reintroduce history into the psychic apparatus around the notion of narcissistic disorders, social suffering, ethical suffering or even the idea of a new “ psychic economy “. Psychopathology is here satelliteed by morality. But how to analyze it ? Norbert Elias clearly shows how emotions are shaped by morals, but by focusing on the emotional dimension of values ​​or moral norms, he ultimately says little about morality as such while constantly focusing on it. refer: “ empathy » (p. 82), sensitivity threshold (p. 85) and “ increasing restraint » (p. 87) which we could call “ intolerable “, “ guilt » (p. 90), « shame » (p. 95-96), « modesty » (p. 96), a puritanical tendency leading to a “ wave of taboos » (p. 103-104), authority and respect (p. 105).

This absence of reflection on morality perhaps explains one of the faults, which we could describe as “ anthropological », of the theoretical model proposed by Norbert Elias: the concept of the process of civilization aims to get rid of the values ​​of evolution, but the analysis conceals the ambiguous idea of ​​a progression in the West of modes of self-regulation impulses: the peasant of the Middle Ages would have less of modesty that the farmer of XX^e century. This thesis is based on questionable empirical bases, but theoretically it attracts attention because of its counterintuitive dimension, because it is usually the moral relaxation and the dismissal of traditional authorities in a situation of social transition (industrialization, urbanization, individualization) which preoccupy the great minds of the social sciences by implicitly valuing the merits of the disappearing community to the detriment of the brutality of the society of individuals… But the real difficulty lies elsewhere: the process self-regulation of affects is ethnocentricsociohistory being here reduced to a selection questionable about what makes history. Elias does not compare forms of morality: there is only one form of moral sense and it is not only the peasant of the Middle Ages who is ultimately less polite, but all the other members of non-Western societies. Here again, the model is empirically unsatisfactory… In fact, the analysis does not take into consideration the plurality of regulations relationships with oneself and with others in the sense not only of a plurality of civilizations of morals (Arab, Chinese, etc.), but also and perhaps above all in the sense of a plurality of valued modes of moral regulation within the same civilization. These ways of treating ourselves and others by distributing our moral feelings very unequally open the way, beyond Elias, to a comparative analysis of past and contemporary moral economies, their geneses, mutations and circulations. In this context, psychology and psychoanalysis cannot be disciplines that the social sciences only have to “ complete ”, but rather “ laboratories » where the formation of certain contemporary moral economies can be studied. If it is above all a question of understanding the characteristics of a social structure and its historical situation in order to understand the kind of individual that these coordinates create and regulate, the individual in question is not that of the psychologists. But a particular moral figure relating to a problem initially formulated in 1938 by Marcel Mauss and leading to a general anthropology of the person: what are the cognitive, affective and moral components expected of the members of a society ?