Mark Edmundson (Yale University Press)
IN HIS Freudian analysis of what we might loosely term 鈥渃ancel culture鈥�, Mark Edmundson wisely chooses not to get into simplistic debates about which of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud鈥檚 ideas have or haven鈥檛 been 鈥減roved right鈥�. What would that even mean? Psychology isn鈥檛 so much science as it is engineering 鈥� applying ideas and evidence to a purpose. In The Age of Guilt: The super-ego in the online world, Edmundson, a literary scholar, simply wants to suggest that Freud might help us better understand our cultural moment.
In the centre of Freud鈥檚 model of the personality sits the ego, the conscious bit that thinks 鈥� and therefore is. Bracketing the ego are two components of the personality that are inaccessible to conscious awareness: the id and the superego. The id is the name Freud gave to all those drives that promote immediate individual well-being. Fancy a sandwich? A roll in the hay? That鈥檚 your id talking.
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Much later, in an attempt to understand why so many of his clients gave themselves such a hard time (beating themselves up over trivia, calling themselves names), Freud conceived the superego. This is the bit of us that warns against misbehaviour and promotes conformity to social norms. Anyone who has seen the uninhibited behaviour of chimps will understand why such machinery might have evolved in an animal as ultra-social as Homo sapiens.
Casual descriptions of Freud鈥檚 model often characterise the superego as a sort of wise uncle, paternalistically ushering the cadet ego out of trouble. This, says Edmundson, is a big mistake. A power that, in each of us, watches, discovers and criticises all our intentions isn鈥檛 to be taken lightly.
He argues that key cultural institutions evolved not just to regulate our appetites, but also to provide direction and structure for the superego. A priest might raise an eyebrow at your gluttony, but that same priest will relieve you of your self-hatred by offering you a simple atonement: performing it wipes your slate clean.
Edmundson wonders what, in the absence of faith, can corral and direct the fulminations of our superego 鈥� which, for him, is no fount of idealism, more a petulant, unrelenting and potentially life-threatening disciplinarian.
The result of unmet superego demands can be severe. 鈥淭he super-ego punishes the ego and turns it into an anxious, frightened creature, a debilitatingly depressed creature, or both by turns,鈥� writes Edmundson. He quotes a showing that, from 2007 to 2017, the percentage of 12 to 17-year-olds in the US who said they had experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year rose from 8 per cent to 13 per cent. Are these teenagers with depression 鈥渋n some measure victims of the wholesale cultural repudiation of Freud鈥�, he asks.
Arguments from intuition need a hefty health warning, but I defy you not to agree with more than a few of Edmundson鈥檚 denunciations: for instance, how the internet has become our culture鈥檚 chief manifestation of the superego, its loudest users 鈥渋mmune to irony, void of humour, unforgiving, prone to demand harsh punishments鈥�.
In 1973, the anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote The Denial of Death, which hypothesised many connections between society, behaviour and consciousness. Becker鈥檚 informed and closely argued speculations inspired a few young researchers to test his ideas and thereby revolutionise the field of experimental psychology. In a culture growing so pathologically judgmental, condemnatory and punitive, I wonder: can The Age of Guilt perform the same valuable trick as Becker鈥檚 book? I do hope so.
Simon Ings is a writer based in London
