A psychoanalytical analysis of Western elites

How should we explain the near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame on the part of Western politicians — especially over Gaza?

Michael Brenner — Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins — isn’t that well known, also due to his non-existent social media presence, but he’s one of the most insightful political thinkers out there. The best way to keep up with his writing is to sign up to his newsletter, which you can do by writing to him at mbren@pitt.edu.

His latest piece is a little political-literary masterpiece. In it, Brenner tries to explain the puzzling and apparently irrational behaviour of Western elites from a psychopolitical perspective, in a similar fashion to the approach I took in attempting to explain the hysterical reaction of the British establishment to George Galloway’s recent election. In that piece, I argued that much of the behaviour of Western elites — especially their crackdown on domestic dissent — can be put down to fear:

Our ruling elites are hugely powerful, but their power is illegitimate — they rule, and are able to reproduce their rule, for no other reason other than the fact that they are powerful. It’s a purely autochthonous form of power, but one that lacks the legitimacy of previous forms of autochthonous power, such as monarchies. They have no no legitimating symbolic reservoir, or “secular theology,” to draw from. Alongside fear — their claim to be protecting us from evil forces out to get us, be it Russia, terrorists, viruses, etc. — the only legitimising force the oligarchs have left is “democracy”. The vote is ultimately the only thing that lends some legitimacy to their de facto absolute rule.

This is why they go to great lengths to control the democratic process — but can’t afford to do away with it altogether. Because, if they were to do so, all that would be left would be raw, naked elite rule, revealed in all its illegitimacy. But even this so-called democratic legitimacy is wearing increasingly thin — and elites know this. Hence their fear, which in turn leads to a constant tightening of the bolts of social control (greater censorship, repression, etc., as well as the constant search for foreign enemies) — and to hysterical reactions to even the slightest challenge to their rule.

Brenner reaches a similar conclusion — “deep down, [Western elites] are scared, fearful and agitated”, he writes — but argues that this in itself isn’t sufficient to explain their apparent lack of guilt or shame, nor their apparent obliviousness to the self-defeating nature of the actions, from a strategic perspective. In order to explain this, Brenner draws on a rather wide range of philosophical and psychoanalytical insights. This is the most salient part of his analysis in my opinion:

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them — unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities.

[How should one explain this] near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame — especially over Gaza, of being humiliated in the eyes of the world? In conditions of nihilism, matters of conscience are moot. For the implicit rejection of norms, rules and laws frees the individual self to do whatever impulses or ideas or selfish interests impel it. With the superego dissolved, there is no felt obligation to judge oneself in reference to any external or abstract standard. Narcissistic tendencies flourish.

A similar psychology obviates the requirement for experiencing shame. That is something that can only exist if we subjectively are part of a social grouping wherein personal status, and sense of worth, depend on how others view us and whether they grant us respect. In the absence of such a communal identity, with its attendant sensitivity to its opinion, shame can exist only in the perverse form of regret that one has been unable to meet the demanding, all-consuming need for self-gratification. That applies to nations as well.

The mindset described by Brenner is well-known in psychology — it’s called psychopathy. As a paper on the topic explains:

Individuals with high levels of psychopathic tendencies tend to show a lack of guilt, a lack of empathic concern, and a disregard for the impact of their decisions on others.

Psychopathy is a personality construct characterized by impaired social-emotional processing combined with a tendency to display disruptive and antisocial behaviors. The interpersonal-affective disturbances that lie at the core of this construct encompass a lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse, and are considered to be unique to psychopathy.

Psychopathy has repeatedly been linked to poor social decision-making, partly hypothesized as due to a diminished capability for making appropriate social inferences and for following social norms and rules.

I find the last paragraph particularly interesting because a specific trait of the behaviour of Western elites in the current historical phase, beyond their ability to engage in, or support, crimes against humanity on a mass scale with no apparent remorse/guilt — a psychological trait that arguably could be applied to most state leaders throughout human history — is precisely their apparent inability to infer the way in which their actions are perceived by others, in this case the wider international community. Hence their pursuit of policies which are having the effect of weakening, at every turn, the legitimacy of the Western-led international order.

So perhaps what we are dealing with in Western societies isn’t just rule by the oligarchy, but more specifically, and more disturbingly, rule by a psychopathic oligarchy — a pathocracy.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)