The French: European Champions of Anxiety and Mistrust?

Ken Fuchsman’s paper opens up a world of America with paranoid, evangelical, and millenarist conspiracies as well as hate speech that is so foreign to me that it feels like another planet, not of Martians, but Trumpians! I will take this opportunity to discuss the very different evolution in France where anxiety and mistrust, but not paranoia are strong.

For several decades, France seems to have been leading the world in the consumption by inhabitants of psychotropic drugs (e.g., antidepressants, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, neuroleptics). It is also one of the European countries with the highest suicide rates. In terms of the World Happiness Report, France places quite low, toward the bottom of the index, while Northern European countries are in the lead. Researchers Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc explain that the difference in performance between France and the Nordic countries is because the French don’t trust anything (i.e., government, national elected officials, companies, media, unions, justice) or anyone (see“Inherited Trust and Growth,” American Economic Review, Vol. 100, No. 5). When asked if it is possible to trust others, nearly 80% of French people answer “no” while 60-70% of people in Nordic countries answer “yes.”  Researchers say that this mistrust not only explains our country’s low economic and social scores, but they also claim that it is the reason why France ranks relatively low in terms of happiness.

For Jérôme Fourquet, political analyst and director of the Opinion Department at French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP—

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opinion polls and marketing studies), France has been going through profound changes for several decades. It is these changes that I will present here, which could help explain this major feeling of mistrust. Fourquet explains in his book, L’archipel français – naissance d’une nation multiple et divisée (The French Archipelago – Birth of a Multiple and Divided Nation, 2020), that for a large part of the 20^th century, elections were determined by the religious variable. Whatever the social class, from one region to another, it was the Catholicism/Republicanism divide that determined the outcome of elections in France. According to this political scientist, we have gradually witnessed the disappearance of the religious matrix, which constituted the invisible or unconscious foundation of our society. Entire sections of the Judeo-Christian frame of reference appear to be shattered and obsolete, which constitutes a major civilizational and anthropological shift.

Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the end of the rural-peasant society, the decline of the structuring institutions that were the Church and the Communist Party, the advent of the consumer society, the rise in the standard of living, and sexual liberation. Moreover, there has been a shift from a demographically homogeneous society of pre-1970 to an ethnocultural diversified society. This fundamental change occurred in the space of about 40 years, which constitutes another major sociological and political fact.

Northwestern African immigration became visible in 1983. There was a sudden emergence of this social group in the landscape and collective representations. This generated an awareness that had long-lasting and profound repercussions, particularly in the electoral field. This year was a tipping point and corresponded to the establishment of the extreme Right-wing National Front party.

Several events (including 9/11 in the U.S.) have induced deep anguish in the population and a hostile climate to Islamism. A demographic change is currently at work since the share of the population coming from the Arab-Muslim world will represent one out of five inhabitants, or possibly one out of four in a few years. Furthermore, a growing gap is emerging between a majority of the population engaged in a process of definitive secularization and groups (such as Muslims, evangelicals, conservative Catholics) marked by a religious revival and a strong conservatism in terms of morals (sexuality, procreation, etc.).

From the economic point of view, there is also a correlation

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between the vote for the far-Right party and the growing unemployment rate, economic insecurity, feelings of abandonment, and anger. Unlike in the U.S., as described by Ken Fuchsman in his article, “The Paranoid Style in American History and Politics: A Psychohistorical Examination,” there is still little or no polarization of social life.

According to Jérôme Fourquet, we are currently witnessing the birth of a French nation made up of an archipelago of islands that ignore each other: the elites, the working classes, the Catholic and Islamic minorities, and the dislocation of common cultural references. In addition to the anxieties caused by these societal upheavals, there is also the fact that we live in a culture of mistrust. In his book Le Malêtre (The Distress, 2012), French psychoanalyst René Kaës proposes a contemporary revision of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). He underlines one of the roots of the current malaise, which would correspond to a disruption of the guarantors that allow the humanization of society. The author defines four metasocial guarantors that ensure trust in society: Religion, which guarantees against death anxiety; Law, which protects against arbitrariness; Culture, which supports our capacity to represent the world; and Science, which protects against submission to ignorance. Their function is to guarantee sufficient stability of social formations and their legitimacy. Their bankruptcy, failure, or insufficiency have generated mistrust.

Kaës describes distrust as a defensive measure against a threatening danger. It is a withdrawal of trust that indicates one cannot definitively rely on anything. The world, others, and oneself are no longer reliable. This hardly perceptible decomposition of trust generates uncertainty and reactionary regressions toward radical religious, and ideological positions, and anguish in front of these crises. However, it is not a question of paranoia as indicated by Fuchsman, as it is possible to observe in the U.S., but of very strong anxiety, even if conspiracy theories flourish on social networks.

There are many ways to deal with the resultant anxiety and anguish. But whereas some time ago the French seemed to consume less psychotropic drugs, consumption exploded again during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study confirms the degradation of the mental health of the French under the effect of the health crisis (Le Monde, May 28, 2021). According to René Kaës, new guarantors leading to restored trust have to be invented or restored. Fortunate-

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ly, many societal creative initiatives exist in France. However, since they have not yet reached a critical mass, they are not always known by the general public.

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