War as a Symptom: the Extimate Enemy, Source of Discontent
Yannis Grammatopoulos
In Civilization and Its Discontents,[1] Freud noted that the then-recent world war showed the intimate part of aggressiveness that turns the human being into a savage beast.”[2] However, two years later, in his correspondence with Einstein, he expressed the wish that the process of civilization would lead to the end of wars.[3]
Ninety years later, not only have we not seen its end, but as we recently experienced, war can return to the same place. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as a shock. Psychoanalysts might be entitled to disappointment, like Freud,[4] but not to surprise, since war, like their own experience, is based primarily on discontent.[5] Indeed, war can be seen in the course of history as a symptom stemming from discontent and as being related to the extimate.
Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, is praised because in contrast to Herodotus who wrote about the Persian Wars, he tried to explain war based not upon its immediate causes or pretexts, but an underlying cause, “real,” yet kept out of sight:[6] Sparta’s fear about the growth of the power of Athens. It is the first attempt to understand war as an effect of discontent, but not the last. If we look at history, we will easily identify the traces of discontent before the outbreak of war. For example, the Treaty of Versailles, humiliating for Germany thanks to its “War Guild clause,” caused a deep sense of oppression and indignation among its people, which the Nazis exploited by calling for its annulment.
It may be too early to identify the discontent that led to the recent war. Yet based on their experience, the psychoanalyst can already spot something more there. Russian propaganda, in its attempt to justify the invasion, described Ukraine as a “nest of Nazis,” evoking one of the worst pages in recent history, which still shocks with its violence. However, at the same time, Russian troops were invading Ukraine. If this does not reveal the real cause, it shows the quality of the extimate[7] that the enemy possesses for the subject. In effect, it is not rare, lately, for authoritarian leaders like Putin, Trump, or Erdogan to threaten or attack those who seem to represent something of themselves.
Psychoanalysts do not need to study the history of the Peloponnesian War, WWI, or WWII in order to know that the symptom stems from a form of discontent and that the enemy is often something of the subject itself in the form of the extimate. Psychoanalysts may be disappointed by the recurrence of war, but they must not back down before the possibility of discontent to be expressed, and of the subject to be given the chance to recognize in their “enemy” something of themselves.
References
[1] Freud S., Civilization and Its Discontents (1927-1931), The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI, London, Hogarth Press, 1961, pp. 57-145.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Freud, S., “Why War?” (1932-1936), The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXII, London, Hogarth Press, 1964, pp. 195-216.
[4] Freud, S., “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1914-1916), The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV, London. Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 273-300.
[5] Roy, D., “Anxiety and Discontent in Civilization, An Introduction to the NLS Congress 2023,” https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Argument-FINAL-VERSION-DISCONTENT-AND-ANXIETY-IN-THE-CLINIC-AND-IN-CIVILISATION.pdf.
[6] Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Mineola, Dover, 2017.
[7] Miller, J.-A., “Extimate Enemies,” The Lacanian Review, Issue 3, Paris, NLS, 2019, pp. 30-42.