Late, Late Lecture; American Anxieties: The Political Result

the title of this lecture is american anxieties their political results and that's what i'm going to talk about now the poet auden has called our age the age of anxiety and quite a few other observers have noted that indeed we not only in the united states but all over the rest of the world there are anxious people and yet what do you think if a poll was done and I ask people are you anxious what would the result be I think reletively few people would say they were anxious my hunch would be that if twenty percent said yes that would be a rather extreme figure because if you're anxious then indeed you are not successful and if you're successful you're not anxious that is the role which you must not play to show or to feel anxiety well does that mean that we are not anxious does that means that

Auden in talking about the age of anxiety has just indulged in bad poetry and otherwise nonsense well that is not so then we must assume that anxiety can exist and people are not aware of it [ in audilble] that they are anxious and I hope that you will forgive me when at first I indulge in some simple consideration of my own profession beings a pyschoanalyst and talk about the question is unconscious anxiety possible as that exists or is that not a contradiction if somebody doesn't know that he is anxious well then he just isn't Well first of all one can observe anxiety which is unconscious in certain direct expressions let me give you one example where it is expressed in a symptom I remember a person who had suffered from the TB tuberculosis in those years in which tb was not yet more

easily controlled by drugs and who had recovered but the doctor had told her that she must remain somewhat careful because if she isn't then TB could break out again and it might spread like a wildfire in her lungs whether that was a particulaly a good idea of the doctor to tell that to the patient I do not know but she was not concerned at all with TB anymore but she developed a symptom whenever she left her house she was afraid a fire would start and she had to go back to her house because she had this obsessional thought which was so strong that it was uncontrolable however she was never thinking about TB and as soon as she knew what she really was worried about this particular anxiety disappeared and she wasn't so terribly anxious about the tb either because many years passed and nothing had happened now here you'll find a typical example

of unconscious anxiety being shown in a symptom another anxiety or unconscience anxiety which you'll find very frequently is of course anxiety which you observe in dreams plenty of our dreams are anxious dreams and in fact quite out of proportion to the conscience anxiety a person may feel if you dream that sharks attack you and you're really frightened and you wake up in order to stop the fright well there must be intense anxiety in you and yet you are not aware of this anxiety during the day and if you are asked well I'm sure most of you have been psychoanalized and therefore wouldn't give that answer but nevertheless if you have not had the benefit of psychoanalysis then you would just say well I'm not anxious this was just a dream another form in which anxiety is directly expressed what one might call general intentions and another form of psychosomatic

symptoms like sweating like gastrointestinal symptoms sometimes we will get even some of these gastrointestinal symptoms when they go to a foreign country not simply because the food is bad or not really because the food is bad but because they're anxious when they out of what they consider their limits of the world which is for many people their own country these are some of the direct expressions of unconscious anxiety which one can observe but there are many more indirect expressions some of which I want to mention one point is a frequent one and that is eating or shopping providing they have the money of course that anxious person very often tends to over eat and in fact an obese person really the obescity is due to over eating you find very often either depressed or are clearly a certain amount of anxiety which is unconscious but by taking in food or by

taking in things which you can buy you somehow make yourself feel stronger in a peculiar way which is not rational but which is nevertheless very real another way of coping with anxiety indirectly is projection you are anxious but you accuse others of anxious you accuse others of being afraid of taking a stand or being coward of well all the sort of things that you hear sometimes and sometimes more sometimes less these days sometimes more and it is a very typical form of coping with an undesirable feeling it's not me it's you you find that of course very often behind all the accusations of the evilness other men to a large extent is projection it's not me who is evil it's you and once I can establish this I feel myself like a good man I

can go ahead with committing sins because I am so convinced that the others are committing sins all the time another form of coping with unconscious anxiety is what you might call deflection so you don't worry about the possibility of nuclear war you worry about your golf score well that is harmless at least for most people it's a reasonable object of worry and to have deflected your real anxiety to something which really doesn't make you feel very anxious on the surface another form of dealing indirectly with anxiety is denial that is simply to say there is no danger we have seen this in many people who have said there is no danger of nuclear war it just can't happen they're even I understand quite a few people today who believe the russians really never had a sputnik the russians don't have nuclear weapons therefore we can do anything we

please because there is no danger that anything happens to us another form of coping with unconscience anxiety is what you might call competitor reaction namely to say and to feel I am strong I have courage well that is in a way similar to the denial about it slightly different at the same time because here the emphasis on my courage on my power on the force I have and that often goes together with a good deal of aggressive hostility where the anxious person cries I'll destroy my enemies because I'm strong and in that way he succeeds in coping with an anxiety which he does not want to be aware of and eventually one form of coping with anxiety is to look for the magic helper the magic helper can be a psychoanalyst and he can be the man on the white horse general or no general

he promises to save us he promises to help us and he is a kind of guarantee that by our strengths nothing can happen to us and our anxieties are alleviated well naturally all these various forms of coping indirectly with anxiety can be combined and very often are combined so you have a whole system of thought which says we are not afraid we are strong the enemy is weak there is no danger and we need a strong leader and if you have that all together in a package then indeed you have a rather strong appeal to people who cope with a great deal of anxiety and yet at the same time are not aware of the fact that they are anxious now I want to talk about the question what are the main anxieties for which Americans are concerned and against which Americans defend themselves in these peculiar forms of which I have just mention

one anxiety for which we have to start with is anxiety of nuclear war now this is a curious psychological problem with which all of you are confronted who have been interest in the peace movement who have been concerned with war the danger of war all of us have asked ourselves how is it possible that people when they know the danger when they know from an author who is a specialist in the field like Mr. Khan that sixty seventy million dead American dead in the first week is an acceptable figure I stumble over the word even because our economy will be as good as new ten years later how is it that people nevertheless don't shout all the time go on the streets as they do when there's an earthquake somewhere especially when they are not only concerned with themselve but their children their wives their

grandchildren is it really true that they're not anxious I cannot believe that is so and I do believe that this anxiety is to a large extent repressed in the proper sense of the word that people do everything not to become aware of an anxiety which has such magnitude that it may lead them to either very courageous or to very foolish acts and who wants to be courageous and who wants to be foolish now the compensatory attitude to this kind of anxiety is either the aggressive posture we are strong we will destroy the enemy nobody can challenge us our honor and so on and the other is one which I mentioned before the denial is no real danger but that is a very interesting thing which I read recently and I'm sure some of the better informed about it that there is an increasing awareness of the real danger and a greater readiness to admit ones anxiety about it and I think that organizations

like SANE and some others have really contributed to that I don't know whether you have seen a poll that in connection with the presidential election campaign about which are not going to speak women about ten percent more women have rejected one candidate in connection with their greater fear of war and their greater desire for peace ten percent men have done that I think that only confirmed that in general women are more realistic than men are although men claim the opposite is the case but I think one can see here that while it is a sad figure that only forty five percent of the men connected their particular choice with a war problem nevertheless I think this is an awareness of anxiety and danger which is greater than it was two or three years ago now the second area in which I think Americans are

anxious is what generally speaking I should like to call the rat race that is to say using this popular expression that is the anxiety which is engendered by our the social life by the way we are organized in our society first of all of course there is always anxiety among workers and employee who can lose their jobs if the employment proves to be unprofitable for the enterprise that fear was much greater when depressions and crises were less comptroller by government were more frequent and more deep then we have reason to believe will to be the case in the future but at the same time we find a great deal of anxiety among workers connected well a structured unemployment brought about by automation and with the progress of the negroes in

the American society which together with automation they feel endangers their position in other words that automation and the race question more than crisis and depressions cause today anxiety among the workers and employees but where we fine perhaps more intense anxiety is precisely not really founded a hundred years ago among workers but among the middle and upper class and especially among the middle and upper echelon of the corporate bureaucracy the principal there is if I may over simplify a little if you don't rise you fall and you never know and you never know whether the greater salary is the next step to promotion or the ( ) end of your career you are eased out for a year you're never quite

sure or very often you're never quite sure and much depends on your getting ahead and not losing out or falling behind not only that you might find yourself with the car on which the installments are not paid but you find yourself without friends because your friends have already been chosen according to your income level and you have changed your set of friends as you rose up on the ladder of the hierarchy and your self esteem is severely damaged because self esteem for most people these days means really that judgment of the market the judgment of success the judgment of other people and not the self esteem which is based in the reality of one's own self the self esteem which has to do with my human qualities or a lack of self esteem which may have to do with the absence or poverty of certain qualities

but self esteem today largely is a self esteem which is not derived from my judgment which is not even derived from the judgment of my friends because I haven't any to speak of but which is derived from my success in this very complicated rat race what a situation to be in if my esteem for myself or even if you go a step further my sense of identity depends on the fact that I have said yes enough times and have said no enough times that the mixture between yes and no is the right one that I'm not too bright and not too dumb and that I never said a thing which would be reported to my superior of as being an unbalanced showing an unbalanced person what is the compensation for this kind of anxiety I think don't think don't feel go ahead and kill the time in which you could have the chance to think

and to feel by doing something and we have a whole industry which helps you in doing something according to the price you came to pay or there are deflections you play golf you travel you consume and perhaps I could mention one symbol of this defection which strikes me as particularly which seems to be rather striking that's a phrase that i may be dumb and toward fashion because i grew up in a time when we didn't even have a refrigerator and life seemed to be both with your art without you but if i could never quite understand why people in the big cities have freezers shopping habits that it seems that even if that body of pain comes at night that one could still buy at six o'clock enough things to feed them i have the impression that the reason is really a symbol of a crystal accord with our anxiety namely whether they're young pressing cider that bees feeding at something here which is full of

meat and ice cream and whatnot i can't stop and you know at the most elementary form of anxiety and people is indeed the field of starvation because of anxiety for european guilt which is indeed the most fundamental biological invasion of inside the inability for that when i don't mean don't vote against three this i mentioned it only as an exile the kind of compensation which the middle and upper classes have to call of anxiety in the you know we often think now we have a certain inalienable right answers peter one which is very important these days who are anxious and he's not two groups one group is the most deprived and you find that in certain areas only a year goes into areas of america

a literacy among the lights the people were really economically cut imitating every week but it bribed and live beyond the level all even acceptable poverty and of course the anxious because they really don't know what will happen to them in a very concrete material sense and then you have another group of people who are anxious because there's another danger to them and that is a what you might call if you want to draw closer look at the jargon the only two classes the old shopkeeper the only be vigilant up and met the man was threatened by the corporation by the chain store the man with a leading in central position in the nineteenth century we seeing an s preacher in the talk about it had major enterprise initiative and all that which of cosby's so much on reality and to talk

about that cooperation not about the government likud this is still all even sometimes of a department store these people live in their way a sociological speaking on it behind the development of the more than twenty century state with a big corporation centralized industry we might like this organizationally might not that doesn't matter but the fact is like every society we proceed we progress on the us are sort of rules which sense that their social place which was once center ah an important leading is slowly lost in this sort of the minutemen and whether deep fear not so much of standing on the landing wanted tomorrow but their deep fear of losing their commanding position and being relegated to the array of society of having no more function

all these anxieties are compensated in various forms that will write will compensate things it by a sense of rage that regard although we are poor leia wipes and that means something wonderful or by the idea of using force or by hate or by the hope for the savory or biscuits combine its expression which hosts the point and those are not all about action or losing and receiving social position those social groups have been confronted with the phenomenon of twentieth century industrial society is indeed a very ominous but certainly not more going on in his example analogy at the moment and that was a phenomenal feat if you analyze who were really it resulted in who were from where did the american

national socialist com they came precisely from the peak last groups not from the workers not immune from those letter lost their job in the big unemployment all of the eddie the fifties but those small middleclass beaten all of those who had been thrown out all the whole social organization and they left behind they were the ones who reacted to have anxieties whether he gets an with old fought a leader who will change history when do the american and it would be a miracle and those miracle it's never happen if as social development we'll be unveiling of history were returned and of course it never had the intention of turning back the clock of his pre he was hurt by the big corporations and he did what they wanted to get a little bit too early too quickly and i'm cautiously but that is the result of time a

man who is more gifted than as some other politicians are but nevertheless who was slightly unbalance but ia as saul shows situation and the psychological motivation is saying it caused a power on the anxiety at all souls a cost of germany who felt they had no future where most tightly connected with the previous century with them when it will all that seemed to be gordon one of them in the past and in this way he became a leader who really not only german they follow it but who had a very important part in the process at his age of human race which is going on now since the first world war and the ways the moment and all the way and it may not talk about the third area of anxiety which i think is quite serious and which is even perhaps less conscious the anxiety about this it's hard to find there would you might

say if you like you're a religious problem an existential problem thinks it about the meaninglessness of life i think many people feel in the day on the same situation which in the fifth book of moore's as you said mentioned as the greatest sin of the rules you have been without joy in the midst of plenty that year we lived in a society why is not really as after and as many people think but more affluent and he's a side to him a lot and it looked at the faces of people who knew me down fourteen second script said ward without joy on fusing find our excitement was join an alliance that people are afraid of portland i'm always surprised that boredom is not more often mentioned

as one of the severe symptoms are suffering as you'll find in them in this book of psychiatry that people who suffer from merkel puts it flips issuing euro says from now as psychosomatic headaches when i think all of this is promising compares with the suffering of boredom provider canada's gate and i think that people unconsciously know the fbi warden are unconsciously constant crying how to avoid this awareness the black radar of the loss of individualism yes get a sense that life had ever meaning that one should be a lie why one is alive and yet these things that they're not alive that if you are not that everything is gone sent with gadgets and i think many men these days no more interested in sports cars and women and many music lovers are more interested

in the efficiency of ai fighter preview of the pillows sound yeah i've likened produced antibodies which are allegedly listened to what we have seen in the development of the first and second industrial revolution by which are upset with the fact that the first industrial revolution was a one hour which are placed the physical energy of man and beast by mechanical energy of steam electricity oh it's on and the second industrial revolution is a much more perhaps radical one one which is ushered in the end these days they don't replace only physical energy but ray you read police files directly to the work process in which your automated machine performs that rejected now only men could perform well in this process which from one standpoint is a process of great progress at the same time something has happened to men men has become what you might call the homo councilman

samir consumer who is passive inwardly person who has no faith who waits to be feted by our gadgets which industry produces he's lonely is anxious these moral he's alienated by which it was a wooden disintegrate which has been used to kick in eastern philosophy that is he does not seem safe anymore as a sudden it was all creative human power but he has transferred this part of the commodities it produces the institutional circumstance review board news since one of the symbols of alienation is at least as it is that a freeway in california it's not you would drive past their old drives you you don't think that the name on the force feeding of power which are at the new york when you drive a car as if you produce energy about it when they met not anymore a

heavy lot of power but you feel helpless man who just looks what makes it is and was afraid if it doesn't find the right exit he has to spend another are getting on and another symbol of alienation is of course the war the atomic weapons he amanda's produce something with his own effort is one of the most blatant it scientifically speak achievements of the human mind and yet man is dominating debate by this instrument to create an e as the greatest difficult place to say the least to free himself from the senate created for it he has become the prison on his own circumstances the prison all things which she has created and indeed is precisely the same situation rich your testament called idolatry namely he is submitted its clients whichever is we cannot hear and we have a mouse and

cannot speak and act by transferring his own humanity to these things and by submitting to the things he hopes to save a little bit of an incentive ways to being touched with himself but he remains nevertheless a man subject to circumstances which he does not control in spite of the fact that they actually is the circumstances he made that is irrationality all the alienation of mine and men these tendencies off turning away from life to gadgets from the organic to be an argument has been seen by a man years before it became clear let me mention just to such statements one from a man that's about eighteen hundred and fifty milwaukee an arch conservative but then it's even a visionary and intelligent knowledgeable men and that was benjamin

disraeli he rolls your pistol crowd with these fuel come on hold my nature to listen even to profits leveling mountainous driving without horses ceiling without winds how can these men believe that there's any power your money mining cypriot of themselves but yeah that europe is not happy and that its fourth excitement it's bustling invention and it's endless joy in the profile not mentally rules only its period and all that it's not in vain the pop guys get promoted by the name of progress are we smarter dimon has been asking them terrorists home when it's too laakso well as this is the union also what would happen

by a man who had the intelligence to see that going back to the previous century would not change the trend that dimension of often solving it's also very clearly retired in nineteen eighty to nineteen hundred and nineteen roark her famous i've got time on a somewhat made a famous manifesto the faith which future is money if this deal in which i read only a few sentences in which you're always you're saying the locking them out and ann hamilton is really clear that the world spend as it enraged by new beauty the beauty of speed erasing more decked out each frame at dawn with great pipes like snakes with explosives rammed the rhine watertown which looks to go running on the front man is more beautiful than the picture of summer dress we wish to glorify war the only health game of the world and militarism patriotism the destructive ahmadi and it is a beautiful idea that you the

content forward now i think you see it even in these few sentences the year when action between these the destructiveness this beer and admiration for the purely mechanical and i think we find ourselves in a way that may make these general mark in a situation where with the beginning of the twentieth century us which seemed to be safe was made on safe again and great tasting society that is intended just that was engendered in this century after the end of the middle ages when another safe wouldn't had been abolished head is iffy and this anxiety draws its own in the various symptoms in various forms the rich man trying to get rid of attention to get rid of anxiety

i wrote the book is a goat escaped from freedom work i try to show that behind the theology don't know that there was a great d object anxiety in which a man had lost the security which the medieval manhattan and i think we see today in the twenty century in the beginning second industrial revolution the outbreak of anxiety which is similar to what happens in the centuries after the end of a breakdown and it ruined well for the us if you please anxiety about the solar eddings elite unit guarding them metaphysical inside your spinach winning side to it would you like to chawla says there is usually a again not much our conscious awareness it is compensated for most of all by that which is the annual

boston which is spreading all over and unfortunately the gospel of consumption consumption of lego sets of books off television of because even of paintings and music everything is made into an outing of consumption in richmond of it remains empty because there's nothing temperatures the western film is another compensation that's perhaps the only example on free enterprise individualism which we find the middle of them printed century and that's why people love with confidence but it isn't real anymore it is a nostalgic feeling to that which exist and then go through with them are certain political ideas or solutions again centralization of government backed militias backed ruler or fashion of eight years although it's sometimes interesting that the same people we speak against centralization government do not speak against civilization

industry because obviously you cannot separate the two things you cannot separate own water production from the process and is asian and from the process all that in some way a bureaucratic management in central i asked forms of prediction philip to speak about symphony eyes at the moment the nod to speak about simple as industry is based one of those ideas in which one prize like in ways the movie to restart all therefore something which turns out to be impossible because if you want to want to centralize government if you want to want to centralize lot of production that would mean publicly on the largest island in america not to speak all all the spry and violence which would be invented by the destruction all the social perspective which makes modern american which makes every

modern society yet this is one of those reforms in which one escapes anxiety and can appeal to many people the same anxieties by projecting a picture of that which was about which could be again if only one finds the right men who can produce the barracks of making that a life which is good there's a fourth day of anxiety and the last one i am going to talk about and that is anxiety of our young generation what would they ask your generation i say it's your generation preached at the first world war which was one of the most the new england sayed says an insincere was pretending to fight for freedom window choice was whether it's more freedom they have the asylum of freedom that the kaiser and all this in the name all fighting for freedom and

ending war and fighting for democracy way from then on the young generation has seen that their fathers and forefathers have committed blenders took that it even worked out at his rich red complete contrast going up they preached that they thought that the us to preach in thought what does judas this question is a christian our generation or faith in everything has been shot at in one person is a juilliard is like it mean no these are not obese precise these are not the backward social classes but these are young poisoned toads all say is that life without crusts life without faith in a life lived without faith in the meaning of the word is almost unbearable william any defections in the young generation one seems the

consumption of six and i think our sexual mores have more to do with buying on the installment plan that have to do with the physiological motivations of fraud and teaching paul barnett is young and has many children that helps do to give life some meaning or it finds expression in forms of rebellion in juvenile delinquents in juvenile violence all if you don't mind my saying so in what were called the beatniks which is one of the innocent forms of his reaction and again you'll find among generation a comprehensive reform the whole lot of that either a candle for the man who will perform that weeds the fathers have not fulfilled and of course there is one thing but deeply promising him that and that is the idea that he's and see the young generation was a man was sincere now of politicians are notoriously had not

distinguished by their sincerity agenda less brave enough many of these young people who were said about everything ice suddenly if we're doing things that one among old country is a sincere man in spite of the fact that as a politician and this idea of all of the sincerity of their leader suddenly has tremendous attraction because that's what one is looking for the point is these appointed by and therefore anyone who can give the impression that which means that collided bit of doing that he is a really sincere man why the others are not sincere in that way at the lids to the deep anxiety all the young generation that you cannot trust anybody who can live that way when he's young it's bad enough to live that we win on his own but when one stops that we already in one's heels life is

awfully miserable well in all of these indices or using scientists we chinese i try to feel repressed anxiety is only one internet one wheel openly anxiety is to replace it by compensations projections defections denial then the fall minute is as i said we fall we are not afraid of the us longer enemies week we have an aggressive courageous spirit all we need is indeed but in this usually it can do so anxiety by denial and repression this great danger because one gets away from reality and to get away from reality in a time in which the two greatest states and the world are confronting each other with the most devastating weapons this is indeed something maybe not so short of madness but certainly something that only dangers for all human

race the other way of coping with these anxieties is to recognize it is very strange and some of you may have had that experience many people think of an anxious person is a whale what he's anxious about him feel worse and so many people try to be encouraging and so it's not saying you don't need to worry everything is all right you think that is a hill with actors on it for themselves because they have multiple when the state of inside another person but actually most of the time it's an anxious person is away at accusations and weinstein says he's closer to reality we can share his anxiety with other people and people don't share so much really enjoy sharing site is not the worst thing to shame to share happiness is perhaps better but much more we're much more difficult

there what i mean to say is you're the tentative is not to replace all anxieties for which have many good reasons but to become a whale and secondly once one is a way of them and once one sees their cause is to try to do something about that bridge produces inside that means practically speaking to end the arms race and that he's going to cornell law and that's only possible that said and necessary act for the survivor well it is the political for the orderly although let's end it would orderly what i really mean to say full and not the arctic no crazy development in the next hundred years and that is that the great invest you have states that is united states and soviet union and european bloc by disarming are capable of all giving aid and technically

and materially to the underdeveloped countries so that these countries have a chance to develop rather than to owe react to the poverty and the whole prism of their situation by new violence i think we can overcome the anxiety only buying imagination inventiveness and buy some faith in man who strangely enough in spite of more obstacles has succeeded in transforming himself in the world and a marvelously course life and creativity in these last six thousand years of history and those who have faith in life hope that history will not end it's the very moment when the hopes for the future are greater than ever thanks it's been yeah it's

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