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PRESENTATION TOPIC: METAPSYCHOLOGY OF EUROSCEPTICISM:
Psychohistorical Insights Into the Grounds of European Integration Process
WRITTEN BY
Sergiy I. Shtukarin, Ukraine
INSTITUTION
Academia Istropolitana NOVA, Slovak Republic
CEP ADVISOR
Andrej Findor, AINova
P A P E R
C O N T E N T S :
Introduction
PSYCHOCLASSES AND ORIGINS OF EUROSCEPTICISM
CHAPTER I
PSYCHOHISTORICAL THEORY OF SOCIETY:
New Perception of Human Evolution
Individualistic Philosophy of History;
Psychogenic Theory of Evolution;
CHAPTER II
GROUP-FANTASY CYCLES IN THE WEST:
Rethinking the Sandbox of History
Resistance to Psychology in Historical Scholarship;
Group-Fantasies and Psychogenic Warfare in European History;
CHAPTER III
MODERN CLASH OF PSYCHOCLASSES AND EUROSCEPTICISM:
Prospects of Political Stability and Integration in Europe
From Holocaust to Kosovo: Europe’s Modern Scapegoats
Conflict Resolution in Modern Psychoclasses;
Conclusion
Bibliography
Annexes
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ANNEX 1:
RESEARCH METHOD:
THE BASIC METHOD OF A SOCIAL SCIENTIST
OR CAN ONE DO ANY SOCIAL RESEARCH WITHOUT INTROSPECTION?
“A psyche can only explore itself to discover the motives of another.
Unknowable are the motives of another species, yet it is only by
discovering the “Hitler in ourselves” that we can understand a Hitler”
-- Lloyd deMause
S C H E M A
O F
S O C I A L
M E T H O D :
FIRST LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
ASSUMPTION > ! <
EVERYBODY GOES TO WAR SOMETIME
CONCLUSION >>>
IN A GIVEN TIME EVERYONE GOES TO WAR BECAUSE OF AN
AGGRESSIVE HUMAN NATURE, INHERITED BY ALL HUMANS
RESULT
<<<
METHOD PROVES NOTHING, BECAUSE HUMAN NATURE IS NOT SPECIFIED
SECOND LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
ASSUMPTION > ! <
EVERYBODY GOES TO WAR SOMETIME BECAUSE
HUMAN NATURE SOMETIMES MOTIVATES ONE TO
CONCLUSION >>>
MY NATURE IS THE SAME, THUS I SHOULD AVOID IT TO SEE
AS OBJECTIVELY AS POSSIBLE WHY PEOPLE GO TO WAR
RESULT
<<<
AGAIN PROVES NOTHING, BECAUSE HOLISTIC ENTITIES, TAUTOLOGICAL
DEFINITIONS AND RELATIVIST CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE APPEAR
THIRD LEVEL OF ANALYSIS
ASSUMPTION > ! <
EVERYBODY GOES TO WAR SOMETIME BECAUSE
ONE’S INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT STIPULATED THE
MOTIVATION TO GO TO WAR IN THE SPAN OF TIME
CONCLUSION >>>
MY
INDIVIDUAL
DEVELOPMENT
CONTAINS
THE
SAME
ELEMENTS AS OTHERS POSSESS, AND ONLY WHEN I
IDENTIFY
THEM
IN
MYSELF,
I
WOULD
BE
ABLE
TO
RECOGNIZE THEM IN OTHERS TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY (AS
WELL AS I MYSELF USED TO) SOMETIMES GO TO WAR
RESULT
<<<
METHOD GIVES THE ULTIMATE INSIGHT INTO HUMAN NATURE, THUS VALID
FOR EXPLAINING EVERY ASPECT OF SOCIAL REALITY IN ITS HISTORICAL
DEVELOPMENT, YET CAN BE APPLIED AFTER TRAINING OF A SPECIAL KIND
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INTRODUCTION:
European Integration process has undergone already a
considerable path during the span of the living generation alone. The
Second 30-year War (1914-1945) – the most disastrous war in history,
waged mainly by neighboring European nations – just in few years was
replaced by a peaceful initiative of the scale that was again unprecedented
in the history of humanity. Supra-national institutions that are taking shape
in European Union nowadays are likely to alter the monopolist position of
national governments over their peoples soon, a trend that is already facing
opposition both from the governments and from the peoples of Europe.
The cancer of this euroscepticism not only challenges
the rhetoric of proponents of wide-scale integration, but also undermines the
very basis of this process, infecting the newly-born single currency unit-Euro
and weakening its financial positions, thus giving ground for further
pessimistic speculations.
Too many explanations reasonable enough were given so
far to this state of things, that for one with little practical background in the
core of European Institutions it might seem difficult, if not impossible to
contribute to the understanding of the complex processes that are reflected
in European politics and top decision-making surrounding the issue of
integration. Yet it appears to be an illusion, as illusionary is the hope for
easy overcoming of euroscepticism as long as no trustworthy insights into
the very origins of peoples’ frustration over their common future are
presented – from groups other than elected politicians, interest groups or
political scientists, backing them up.
If not performing this promising attempt, the author aspires
to contribute to such shift of analysis (from the consequences – to the roots)
by offering a draft application of revolutionary-new social theory to the case
of integrating Europe and proposing the areas for future close investigation.
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PSYCHOCLASSES AND ORIGINS OF EUROSCEPTICISM
CHAPTER I:
PSYCHOHISTORICAL THEORY OF SOCIETY
“The ultimate source of all historical change is psychogenesis,
the lawful change in the childrearing modes occurring
through generational pressure and psychospeciation”
– Lloyd deMause
In order to allow for further consideration of the recent
insights into human psyche’s acting on the stage of history, we should
consider first the method that enabled some radical social scientists to
introduce the very new philosophy of history. This method can be
characterized as (1) introspection combined with (2) interdisciplinary
approach.
(1) The Renaissance of scientific introspection – which
was once at the corner of psychological science but was neglected and
forgotten despite it had never been proved to be a-scientific as some
opponents claimed – can be traced since the mid-20th century. Today’s
state of this method is determined by the principle – “A psyche can only
explore itself to discover the motives of another. Unknowable are the
motives of another species, yet it is only by discovering the ‘Hitler in
ourselves’ that we can understand a Hitler”. According to author’s
classification device (see Annex 1), this can be labeled as the third level of
social analysis, which is the only one capable of producing insights into
social reality, assuming that there is no entity beyond individual as society,
as claimed by lower methodological dogmas.
(2) The application of the interdisciplinary approach as well
proved to be fruitful. After the fall of sociobiology that borrowed the common
notions from Darwinian evolutionary biology and was incapable to produce
real theories of cultural evolution in human populations, a drastically new
concept of interdisciplinary approach was implemented to produce a new
social theory. The Dilemma of many sciences seems to be solved by a bold
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attempt to create of theory not on the ground of the hard facts from various
fields, but namely the opposite – to deal with the blind spots of the maintrend theories of the dealt sciences.
Despite the questionable scientific validity of the said
method, it gave the insights into fields, mostly ignored or mistreated by
“serious” science. From the genetic biology and neurobiology it was taken
the concept of epigenesis, still disputed in scientific community, applied to
the development of psyche of the fetus in the womb, disregarded by
orthodox psychologists. And on the basis of the evidence from the clinical
psychiatry data on the adult memories of the fetal drama – produced the
concept of human history as restaging of early traumas, with better
childrearing modes as the main engine of psychogenic evolution of human
populations and consequent cultural change in various groups.
Thus, for many reasons, the approach described above is
dubious with a bulk of old-minded scientific community, which nevertheless
makes it even more attractive for us to attempt its application to the subject
of European integration after such a brief overview and giving some closer
view of the foundations of the psychogenic theory as story goes (See Annex
2).
Yet the seeming simplicity of the main idea it should
already be noticed that the scope of the theory goes far beyond the areas of
investigation that all other social sciences assumed so far (even if not taking
into account their general refusal to build universal theories within their
respective fields). The emerging science of Psychohistory would soon
swallow all other social sciences, for it possesses the predictive powers, so
desired from social science, which the current methods can not provide us
with. And this is going to be our secondary target – to attempt presenting
the futuristic view of European integration on the basis of psychohistorical
analysis of the primary subject of this research, i.e. euroscepticism.
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GROUP-FANTASY CYCLES IN THE WEST:
…“Serious” history has long been considered a record of public not private
events. We instead should ask how each generation of parents and children
creates those issues which are acted out in arena of public life.”
– Lloyd deMause
Euroscepticism, as any other political attitude according to
the present dogma of political science should be considered following the
next assumption: "Political attitudes are generally assumed to be the result
of a rational, reflective process." That this is not really so we can see from
the course of events in human history, where completely irrational events
compose most of the Sandbox of History, with only historians trying to find
rationalizations to the turmoil in the world decades after the real events,
misinterpreting them replacing historical motivations with their substitute
historical logic. This trying to explain history by “impersonal structural
forces” is a simple following by historians the disproved Standard Social
Science Model of cultural determinism, which says "culture determines
social behavior" a statement that is simply a tautology. “Since ‘culture’ only
means ‘the total pattern of human behavior’ (Webster), to say ‘culture is
what makes a group do such and such’ is merely stating that a group's
behavior causes its behavior.”
If we attempt to avoid this mistaken perception of human
history, and try to see the psychological motivations beyond any historical
activity of individuals, we will approach to the understanding (1) of history
as acting out of individuals’ psychic motivations deprived of the intra-psychic
defense mechanisms, that are switched off when individual joins the group,
and (2) that individuals use or even form groups them namely to restage
their early personal events through group-fantasies, by entering into social
alters. “Even though no group is too small to synchronize and act out the
group-fantasies of its members, the larger the group the more deeply it can
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enter into the social trance and the more irrational the group-fantasies it can
circulate and act out. The dissociated shame that is operative in small
groups is equally there in nations. <…> That nations have a central
persecutory task is a widely-denied truth. That nations are necessary for
more rational enterprises than war and brutal domination of others is a
wholly unproven assumption. In truth, most members of most nations
participate in one way or another in the torture and killing of others and in
economic and political domination. We only deny it by colluding in such
delusions as that leaders are to blame, that suffering is deserved, that
punishment reforms, that killing is moral, that some people are not human,
that sacrifice brings renewal and that violence is liberating. Indeed, most of
what is in history books is stark, raving mad-the maddest of all being the
historian's belief that it is sane.”
Lloyd deMause distinguished such group-fantasies as:
- PROSPERITY PANICS AND INTERNAL SACRIFICES;
- WAR AS A SACRIFICIAL RITUAL;
- THE LEADER AS POISON CONTAINER.
Where nations are about producing social violence to
relieve the anxieties produced by their getting richer which revives common
memories of neglectful or over-protective childrearing. DeMause also
elaborated 4 consequent phases of acting out these fantasies that in
modern societies are mostly connected with elected leaders, who need to
be sacrificed for the sins of the group (Christianity is a perfect example how
this fantasies emerged and fixed in European peoples’ unconscious). These
phases of group-fantasy parallel the four phases of birth. The four
leadership phases are: (1) strong, (2) cracking, (3) collapse and (4)
upheaval – they develop as leaders become less and less able to provide
grandiose manic solutions to the nation's growing growth panic, and result
in either a sacrificing of the leader or in sacrificial wars against home and
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abroad poison containers if the leader appears to be potent enough to
produce ones.
“Wars are sacrificial defenses that have proven to be
effective in reducing fears of ego disintegration due to prosperity panic. But
even more effective than sacrificing mothers and children in external wars is
the internal, institutionalized wars against mothers and children that nations
conduct periodically as social policy. Structural violence (excess deaths
because of poverty alone) amount to 15 million persons a year world wide,
compared to an average 100,000 deaths per year from wars. Economic
recessions hurt and kill more mothers and children as sacrificial victims than
most wars. As in foreign wars (external sacrifices), political and economic
wars against mothers and children (internal sacrifices) are regularly
conducted during periods of peace and prosperity.”
Since it is prosperity and the fear of intolerable growth that
triggers the restaging of trauma, it makes psychohistorical sense that
European Union now experiences a revival of euroscepticism that is as we
will later learn in detail, connected directly with the group-panic over the
economic growth in integrating Europe. This is closely connected also with
the
complicated
evolutionary
processes
in
the
European
nations
themselves, the eternal conflict of older psychoclasses that dominate in the
group-fantasy-making of the nation – and newer ones that restage their
traumas differently and thus aspire to produce new group-fantasies of the
mechanism corresponding to their own social alters.
Thus after reviewing briefly the theoretical background of
group-fantasies, we can arrive to the hypothesis that was stated in the
introduction and which is going to be tested and verified in the last chapter,
that whatever the seemingly “objective” economic reasons that give ground
for euroscepticism, it is about the people’s feelings of shame produced by
the economic success of early stages of integration rather than the failure,
and that the present not-so-promising position of the current common
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initiatives (as EMU and its Euro) is ones again the example how economic
factors are vulnerable to merely psychological moods of the nations.
CHAPTER III:
MODERN CLASH OF PSYCHOCLASSES AND EUROSCEPTICISM
“…Today’s euro-sceptics have an embarrassment of riches. Many refuse
to accept just how far we have come and what we have achieved”
– Jonathan Collett, “Eurocritic” Campaing Director, The Bruges Group
According to the psychogenic theory of history, each
society comprises of individuals belonging to different psychoclasses and
that they form groups with those sharing their restaging mechanisms to
produce group-fantasies to relieve common anxieties. Most of the European
countries have all 6 psychoclasses within their populations, with socializing
mode as the dominant one. The processes of integration created the
circumstances where the conflicts surrounding the birth of the new
psychoclass
are
getting
into
interference
with
the
processes
of
psychospeciation and psychogenesis in European populations that are now
influenced by their merging. The conflict of psychoclasses follows the same
4-phase pattern that now takes form of (1) innovative, (2) depressed, (3)
manic and (4) war phases cycle.
This assumption can suggest that the intra-psychic conflict
resolution should be getting considerably severe form over time, and this
seems to be true, if we consider the fact that in 1999 for the first time in 50
years after 1945 European nations got fully involved into armed conflict in
European soil as the NATO operation in Kosovo had been, with Allied
forces severe bombings of the cities of “aggressor” and German tanks
entering civil settlements just as it occurred half a century ago (now on the
“right side” as Joshka Fisher said). We can see how the European
scapegoats of the past (Jews, communists, etc.) were replaced over time
with modern scapegoats – underdeveloped nations and poor people, who
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poison the growth of rich European nations and need to be cleansed to
relieve the shame of prosperity.
Yet there should be noticed the other side of this process,
that the rule of higher psychoclasses (the higher the psychogenic mode of
psychoclass, the less it is necessary for it to act out its conflicts) can be
applied to Europe here too, to see the origins of euroscepticism and gain
the possibility to predict its influence in different European nations and
spread to other (lower) psychoclasses through imposing on them the
defensive mechanisms of the dominant ones.
Thus the true stability and prosperity in Europe can be
achieved only if the next generation of policy-makers will create the
conditions for the improvement of the balance of psychoclasses in
European societies, strengthening the positions of the higher ones by
spreading the values of higher psychogenic modes and manipulating the
group-fantasies to avoid the falling into new scapegoat-searching and
purification wars of all kinds.
CONCLUSION:
In the paper, the application of the Psychogenic theory of
History was proposed to the case of euroscepticism as group-fantasy,
connected with drastic transformations that European societies are currently
undergoing. The aim of the paper was not in investigation of the political,
economic and cultural processes that are usually considered as the main
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roots of euroscepticism, but rather a proposing of the revolutionary new
vision on the problem, that appears to be influential in European politics and
urgent for the future development of European integration process. Thus
new areas of social research were proposed and new practices of decisionmaking were pointed out.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: