A Muslim techie is murdered in Pune because someone posted anonymously on Facebook an insult to Shivaji who died more than 333 years ago. A Dutch filmmaker had his throat cut in broad daylight in Amsterdam for making an ill-judged film on Islam. Women are raped and then murdered in India. Men randomly shoot people in schools and malls in the US.
Rage abounds in the world. Publishers withdraw books which could presumably hurt someone’s sentiments. Artists cannot show their work for similar reasons. A Tamil mathematician objected because an American play showed Ramanujan being kissed on the brow by a goddess in a dream!
These are unconnected events but they display a deep psychological malaise of epidemic proportions in modern societies. The existence of neurosis, psychosis even, has always been part of the human condition, and recent research shows that even apes could, in some circumstances, display such effects in their behaviour.
But what is new is the regular manifestation of highly neurotic socio-pathology affecting groups at a time, and militantly asserted as justifiable behaviour. Better laws or more policing alone cannot cope with such phenomena. Better educational methods from the early years which attempt to mould humanistic attitudes in children, could help, but these should be based on a deeper understanding of psychological processes at play.
The suppressed unconscious Sigmund Freud and his disciples developed the science of psychoanalysis in the early part of the last century to bring to light the power of the unconscious, long suppressed and denied under the puritanical value system of the Victorian age. Even the views of Indian social reformers were moulded by such imported values of the English. The sexual instinct came to be considered as something ‘dirty’, the devadasis were seen as nothing better than prostitutes, and even the sari came to be worn differently to hide female legs.
Freud and Jung sought to understand the origin of psychotic manifestations as repercussions of the suppression of the unconscious, the denial of the sexual impulse, and fear of it. There was also recognition that the human psyche saddled with a dominant ego led to the production of socio-pathologies like militarism and war.
What is happening today is somewhat different. Rapid modernisation and deepening of capitalism has left many men without the skills or possibilities to provide for their families. They realise they face an uncertain future. Traditional social values are challenged by new liberal values and new sexual mores of the West, propagated ‘in their face’ by the media. The ego is almost drowned by the uncontrollable tides of the unconscious.
Desperate measures In desperation, many men are reaching out to archetyal images to tie their egos to, for certainty, for control over their lives, and to salvage self-respect. The archetype could be a perfect God like Rama, a historical hero like Shivaji, film stars like Rajnikant or Amitabh Bachchan, or even a character like Rambo killing to save the American ‘way of life.’ Their egos, their souls, are firmly linked to the imagined perfectness of such archetypes. Any imagined insult to the image has to be punished, exorcised physically by violent demonstration, openly in social groups, to re-validate their own existence. Intellectual liberal attitudes and discussion would still leave their egos battling internal conflicts. The daily rape and murder sequence reported in India is another feature of this loss of self. It denigrates women as the source of ‘dirty’ sexual attraction, and murder is a denial of yielding to it.
Modern societies have come a long way towards restoring the status of women by changing laws and removing hurdles in the workplace. However, the process of change must also necessarily focus on men and their attitudes, through open discussions with their social and religious leaders. The meaning of the ancient religious practice that located sexuality in creative spirituality and sanctified marriage has to be re-visioned. Economic processes cannot be allowed callously to junk unskilled men, and present-day governance requires the recognition that the individual’s self-worth is damaged at great peril to all nations.
(The writer is advisor to The Jung Centre, Bangalore)