Author : Ioane Tetiashvili
„Jedes Volk durchläuft den Ödipuskomplex – es muss seinen König töten, um erwachsen zu werden.“
‘Every nation goes through the Oedipus complex—it must kill its king in order to grow up.’
— Leo Trotsky was a fan of yours, wasn’t he? You sympathized with him too.
— Only halfway. He used to say that revolution is initially followed by blood and torment, but after a while, the people will achieve universal happiness. I was, and still am, convinced of this only halfway—because I believed only the first part of that idea,’ replied the gaunt, intelligent-looking old man with an ironic smile.
On a rainy spring evening, a rather elderly Sigmund Freud and his prominent patient, Sergei Pankejeff—a wealthy emigrant from Odessa—were sharing thoughts at Vienna’s Café Central. (It was through the study of Pankejeff’s childhood psychological trauma that Freud laid the foundation for his work: ‘From the History of an Infantile Neurosis—The “Wolf Man”’) .
— Doctor, I think constantly about the Russian hell, all this bloodshed, the deportations.
— You see, they even exiled Trotsky; they have silenced the people.
— Tell me, what are we dealing with? Madness? A curse?
Freud took off his glasses and stared intently at his former patient, as if he were looking not at a man, but at an entire era.
— You wait in vain for a psychoanalyst to correctly assess political events or predict their outcomes. For me, that is impossible.
— Then what is happening? Schizophrenia?
— No. Schizophrenia destroys the Ego; here, on the contrary, the Ego is excessively overgrown. The government’s Ego is so vast that it considers itself the centre of the universe. We are observing a terrible game of indulgence in power.
— And the devouring of their own accomplices? Is that not cannibalism?
— Not that either. Cannibalism is an act of passion. Here, we are dealing more with self-interest. They do not eat their supporters; they temper and train them—habituating them to obedience, fear, and depression, ultimately humiliating them to the point where the victim perceives it as the norm.
— Well then, is that not exactly what masochism is?! Seeking pleasure in self-inflicted pain and suffering?
—The masochist derives pleasure from his own pain. Here, they experience the pleasure that power gives them by taming others.
—Then, maybe it is karma? Retribution for old sins?
—‘Karma’ is a convenient word for those who fear acknowledging the unconscious. It is easier for people to say, ‘This is my Karma,’ than to admit that their actions and problems are the result of their own internal, unconscious motives. Karma is a ‘religious’ decoration used to cover the fear of the unconscious. Society cannot bear to admit that it creates its own suffering—and so it says, ‘This is our fate’, as if shedding all internal responsibility.
Freud puffed on his cigar, exhaling a thick stream of smoke. Then he took a sip of tea, carefully placed the cup back on the saucer, and for the first time in his life, a thought like this flashed through his mind:
All my life I have searched for the dark corners in people’s dreams, but it turns out the darkest dreams have been outside—in the streets, in states, in the people that sometimes even kill their own king, only to give birth to a new tyrant all over again.
—No, my dear Sergei… all of this looks more like zoophilia. A kind of love towards loyal dogs and cattle—experiencing orgasm from raping them, an act of caressing and, simultaneously, of humiliation. The people become bound to the very power that destroys them, through a simultaneous mixture of hatred and love. Totalitarianism is not a political system—it is more of a psycho-sexual pathology of society. The government perceives the people as domestic animals—creatures who are simultaneously loved and degraded.
Pankejeff remained silent for a long while. Then he chuckled softly—perhaps out of a sense of joy, but more so, this laughter was dictated by a sudden ‘illumination’ of the mind.
Meanwhile, outside, the rain had stopped. It was as if the calm sky silently echoed what the two were discussing: nothing ends, it only changes form. People can kill a king, but they can never kill the desire for obedience within themselves.
