The Civilizing Process and Long-Term Historical Change

When we think of psychohistory, we usually think of using psychoanalysis to investigate the psychology of individual humans who are of historical importance, such as Hitler or Gandhi. And when we think of Freudian psychology, we usually think of the human psyche as fixed. Humans have drives, their minds are divided into conscious and unconscious as well as into ego, id, and superego.

But there is another side to Freud’s thinking about history, namely his belief that psychology changes as people become more civilized. It is extremely unfashionable to juxtapose the terms “civilized” and “primitive” as Freud does. Yet it is worth recalling what Freud means by this juxtaposition. Freud sees human culture as changing over time and human psychology changing as human culture changes. Human culture not only changes, but it advances. Humans learn to master nature so as to satisfy their needs and desires, and humans develop in their social relations. The two sides of human development, technical and scientific knowledge on the one hand and social relations on the other, are intertwined; they develop together. The advance of culture leads to an advance of civilization, as individual human beings learn to master their instinctual drives. The cultural process mankind has undergone from primitive to civilized is basically the same process a child in a civilized society has to go through as she is civilized by her environment.

Civilization involves the control of a people’s primitive instincts but it is not all or nothing. There are two sources of self-control: love and power. Love leads to an internalization of civilized norms, such as honesty, non-violence, and sexual restraint. This is the most real civilization and results when culture genuinely transforms the individual psyche. Power, by way of contrast, creates only the external appearance of civilization in the individual. Power uses the power of the state to reward and punish so as to force citizens to act in a civilized manner creating a sort of pseudo-civilized citizen.

Even for the truly civilized there is a cost to controlling their impulses. The primitive part of a person is never entirely extinguished. For the modern primitives in civilized clothing, the urge to escape civilization is very powerful. It is for this reason that wars, waged by ostensibly civilized countries, can easily lead people to behave in highly uncivilized ways. A person who in ordinary life would be very unlikely to even strike another, goes off to war and kills others, in some cases highly ambivalent about, but in others exhilarated by, being freed from the yoke of civilization.

The scholar who has done most to pursue and extend this sociological side of Freud’s thinking is Norbert Elias (1897-1990). In such books as Involvement and Detachment (1987), The Civilizing Process (1994), and The Germans (1996), Elias makes Freud’s view of human psychological change in history one of the cornerstones of his historical sociology. Asked what he learned when he lived in Ghana, Elias answered, “I was always of the opinion that the theory Freud left behind needed to be developed further. I thought that superego and ego formation in simpler societies would be different from ours, and this expectation was fully confirmed in Ghana.” Elias goes on to ascribe the difference not to any European superiority, but to the greater insecurity of life in simpler

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societies, which results in the creation of personal gods and spirits as representatives of the superego (Elias, 1994, pp. 70-71).

In his works, Elias attempts to describe the changes in the European psyche that led to the present level of “civilization” as well as the differences between the developments in different European countries. Elias never used “civilization” as a noun, but rather talked about a civilizing process, a way of looking at “civilization” that fits well with Freud’s thinking. Elias was acutely aware that the civilizing process could be reversed and lead to acute periods of decivilizing, such as the World Wars and the Third Reich. On a personal level, Elias also compared himself to Freud as a scientist (in Elias’ case, a sociologist), who remained true to his calling and did not compromise with prevailing opinion (Elias, 1994, p. 76).

Elias’ scholarship shows how psychoanalysis can help us to understand not only the psychology of individuals but the psychology of evolving mankind. It is vital to continue to work to understand ever-changing social psychology of humans, as we continue to struggle with the issues of war, violence, and death in our new millennium.

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