# 046

Unquestionable Freedom in a Psychotic West.

In the end, democracy, entailing a freedom of choice, is the

prerequisite, for Muslims as much as anyone else, for creating

a society that is both cohesive and fair.1

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,

and I ain’t nothin’, nothin’ Honey, if I ain’t free.2

Freedom is not something to be thought about!3

This article was inspired by several encounters I have had with the representation of ‘freedom’, as if

freedom is a thing-in-itself. The foremost is the description by George Bush of freedom as a gift to the

Middle East; a gift that can be given to the Iraqis in the form of democracy, commodity choice and

religious ‘tolerance’.4 This is particularly notable in his speech to Marines at Camp Lejeune, but

repeatedly in other pronouncements, including his speeches to the Australian parliament and to British

citizens, respectively. Freedom, for Bush, is a gift, wrapped and decorated by the United States, with

the assistance of the ‘coalition of the willing’. This image is mirrored in Western popular culture

through cinema, advertising and product imagery. For example, in the Wachowski Brother’s Matrix

trilogy freedom is had in the caves of Zion, and celebrated through the very white loins of Keanu

Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss (in Matrix Reloaded).5 Then, outside the cinema, a momentary glance

towards the shopping complex sees freedom further presented in its presence as inspiring and

animating the loins of the Western subject in the form of Tommy Hilfiger ‘Freedom Jeans’, ‘Freedom

Perfume’ and the Ford ‘Freedom Car’ (just to name a few).6 Later, at academic forums, when I have

attempted to discuss some of these images, I have been confronted by several assertive statements

assuring me that freedom is something the West has, and something the West has to give. Indeed, the

response to my questions regarding the conditions of possibility for thinking about freedom in the West

has appeared to offer a platform, in both the US and Australia, for an assertive statement that “we do

have freedom to give!” as if I’d said otherwise; as if the very question itself threatens the having of

freedom. Hence, I suggest in this article that despite - or perhaps because of - the presence of freedom

1

in its presence as image, gift, commodity, indeed, as democracy itself, freedom is not something to be

thought about.

The war on Iraq and the initiation and application of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ presented freedom as a

gift to the people of the Middle East. This reiterated the already prolific representation of freedom as a

quality that inheres in ‘freedom’ products, images and simply being free in a Western democratic

nation. The being of being free is filled with shifting form and content. Like the ever attentive Other to

the psychotic, freedom approaches at every moment through its substance and substancelessness, ever

interpreted to fill the fantasies of psychosis. Indeed, freedom has a psychotic place in the imaginary of

the Western subject, its signified status being conveniently and often contradictorily explained through

the assertive broad sweeps of contemporary liberal democracy. As if democracy itself offers inherent

freedom and the fundamental elements in the enabling of free choice. The Western subject, who might

currently be described as the citizen of the countries signed up as the ‘coalition of the willing’ (to

invade Iraq), wants to bask in this psychotic space and imagine himself the central figure in the Other’s

gaze. But like J.R.R. Tolkien’s eye of Sauron,7 the gaze of the Other is never fixed; even the psychotic

must perform an activity to maintain the fantasy of its omnipotence.

The Western subject, having been subjectivised through and subjected to the dominant narratives of

liberal discourse - with an emphasis on individual liberty, representative democracy and legal

positivism – rests (un)easily in his/her location as a subject in the ‘free West’. The Western subject is

the subject who enjoys their freedom through choosing and purchasing, and struggles to see (if not

assertively resists) the possibility that there was ever a questionable status to the having of freedom. In

contemporary times this subject can now rest a little easier as s/he who inhabits the world where

freedom is had and given significance in a positive form. Freedom is everywhere and anything that

articulates with the tropes of liberalist democracy. And, freedom is apparently in such excess in the

West, that it can be given as a gift to others.

The subject of this freedom, the subject who is represented in the speeches of Bush and Howard as s/he

who has, who possesses, this freedom qua gift - the Western subject, who I will hereafter refer to as

2

‘West’, the man8 - can now take up a fantastical position. West, having been hailed by the

(supposedly) popular peoples’ choice, is able to inhabit a position of fantasising himself as a free

subject, as a subject for whom the ‘I [he] takes himself to be’9 is a free ‘I’, an I who has freedom to

give. But what is this freedom subject West supposedly has to give? Arguably, the freedom George

W. Bush claimed to be giving the Iraqi people was the freedom to participate in the governing of their

nation - a protective, if not participatory, version of representational democracy. In his speech to the

British people and Queen Elizabeth II he described ‘advancing freedom’ as a ‘democratic revolution’

no less.10 This is the freedom for Iraqis to vote for a representative of their choosing. And indeed, with

the sanctions lifted and US companies enabled and protected in their entrée into Iraq, Iraqi’s will soon

have the freedom to choose the very same ‘freedom’ products Americans have in their homes. The US

is bringing Iraq ‘freedom’ indeed, and as Americans are (currently) fond of saying: ‘Freedom does

come at a cost’.11 George W. Bush counters the quantification of the cost of freedom and asserts the

positivity of freedom as an incalculable gift when– in defence of his budget requirements for the war -

he poignantly asks: ‘how do you measure the benefit of freedom in Iraq?’12 Freedom’s benefit is

incalculable and this assures its gift status. And, it is precisely this status that then reinforces the

positive parameters of freedom. George W. Bush could well iterate Janice Joplin’s sentiment, mutatis

mutandis: freedom itself ‘ain’t nothin’ Honey if [it] ain’t free’, the double negative assuring its

positivity and its economic freeness assuring that it is indeed a gift. In the original lyrics (of Me and

Bobby McGee) it is also Janice’s freeness as a ‘free I’ that is at stake – ‘[she] ain’t nothin’, Honey if

[she] ain’t free’. The terror of this ‘nothin’’, which we might call the Real of freedom,13 I will

extrapolate as precisely the psychotic condition of West in the contemporary West.

In this article I will discuss the presentation of the presence of freedom as a substance psychotically

signified as any trope of Western democracy; as any trope which signifies choice through products,

political practice or engagement, and presence (if not active participation) in the democratic nation.

Freedom, in contemporary ‘war speak’ has become any signifier which articulates with the being of the

subject in the democratic nation. The significance of freedom in nations described as the West, or the

‘coalition of the willing’, I will explain as a signifier fortified in its given meaning through the giving

of freedom as a gift to others. In the first section I will explain the ontological location of freedom in

the Western subject using the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and a brief discussion of the child

3

Max’s situation in the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are,14 as a product of the subject in

subjection through Western discourses of freedom. I will then discuss the psychotic status of subject

West in his identification as a free subject in Western democracy with a consideration of Jacques

Derrida’s explanation of the (im)possibilities of ‘the gift’.15 The use of psychoanalysis as a method of

analysing the psyche of the social, that is, as a method of ‘socio-psychoanalysis’,16 will finally be

interrogated as a problematic methodology. I will not interrogate psychoanalysis proper for its

universalising leanings. Psychoanalysis is a particular methodology for assessing and interpreting the

1 ‘Arab Women: Their Time has Come’ The Economist Vol 371, No 8380, June 19, 2004, p.14.

2 K.Kristofferson ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ performed by J. Joplin, released 1971.

3 J.Rogers ‘‘The gift’ of freedom is given! Foreclosing on Das (Freedom)Ding through Matrix

Reloaded.’ unpublished conference paper, Law Culture and Humanities, University of Connecticut,

March 11, 2004.

4 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030403-3.html; ‘President Discusses Operation

Iraqi Freedom at Camp Lejeune’, April 3, 2003. Camp Lejeune is a Marine Corps Base Camp in North

Carolina. George Bush was addressing Marines and their families. ‘George Bush’s Speech’ Sydney

Morning Herald October 23, 2003. This sentiment is reiterated by other leaders of the ‘coalition of the

willing’ such as John Howard in Australia.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030503-1.html. President Bush, P.M. Howard

Discuss Operation Iraqi Freedom. May 3, 2003.

5 Wachowski and Wachowski (1999) Matrix, (2001) Matrix Reloaded, (2003) Matrix Revolutions

(films) Warner Bros.

6 The ‘freedom car’ produced by Ford and funded by money allocated for research by George W. Bush,

assures the purchasers of ‘freedom from petroleum dependence’ and ‘freedom to choose the car you

want.’ http://www.ford.com/en/innovation/engineFuelTechnology/freedomCar.htm; Tommy Hilfiger

Freedom perfume tells you precisely that ‘Freedom is classified as a refreshing, flowery fragrance.’ (I

assume they are talking about the scent, but it’s never clear).

7 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Harper Collins, London, 1968).

8 I reference West as a ‘man’ because at this point I intend to discuss him as a diagnosable individual

and because the name is standardly associated with that of men in the West. He could just as easily be

sexed female.

4

subject and as such offers multiple complex modes of interpretation and assessment. Its practice is best

applied in the clinic, but can offer some useful tools for considering contemporary manifestations of

social policy and sentiment. I will however consider the problematic, common in what I’m calling

‘socio-psychoanalysis’, of establishing a homogeneous human subjectivity; the problem of suggesting

that there is only one patient: West. Socio-Psychoanalysis will therefore be critiqued for its

employment as a mode of analysis which operates to name the motivations of the subject, as if all

subjects have the same relationship and responses to notions of freedom, and indeed notions of

persecution since ‘September 11’. Object-relations group psychoanalysis will then be considered for its

usefulness as a methodology of ‘rule by the people’ with particular emphasis on the role of the hysteric.

The problems and potential use of psychoanalysis will thus be explored in the final section of this

article and further discussed as a metaphoric illustration of precisely the problematics of the ontology

of subject West in relation to his participation in democracy.

9 This is Lacan’s configuration of the subject who sees itself in the ‘mirror’ and assumes it is a ‘whole

subject’ unified in its capacity to speak, act, and inhabit the world with other beings. For Lacan this

‘whole I’ is precisely not the condition of the subject but the necessary representation of the subject to

itself. J. Lacan ‘Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’, Ecrits: A Selection. (Norton, USA,

2002), pp. 3-9.

10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3282465.stm; Bush sets out 'mission for freedom', BBC News,

Nov 19, 2003.

11 http://congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?id=656&letter_id=93134026 Letters to Leaders,

Congress.org; May 31, 2004; http://www.collegenews.org/x3207.xml Candidate's Vietnam Experience

Reminds Us That "Freedom Comes at a Cost," John Kerry's Biographer Tells DePauw Audience, April

5, 2004.

12 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/23/MN204798.DTL Bush team sets war

cost at$80billion. Estimate comes after Congress has OKd budget, March 23, 2003.

13 I have developed the notion of the Real of freedom in ____ ‘‘The gift’ of freedom is given!’ in W.

MacNeil, L. Davies, C. Morris, ed., Galactic Jurisprudence, in press.

5

I take as my point of interrogation in this paper, the moment of participation in representational

democracy as recognising (or misrecognising) oneself as a free democratic subject who chooses. This

performance of the recognition of being a choosing individual may be through performing ‘democracy’

through letters, demonstrations, rallies and voting, through consideration and purchase of products, or a

negative comprehension of not being not free. In part, the distinctions between participatory, protective

and elite forms of representational democracy are irrelevant to my argument insofar as it is the

perception of one’s ‘I’, being a free I, which is at stake. Paradoxically, one could argue that these

distinctions are precisely relevant insofar as the enactment of freedom in democracy can be viewed as

intensely attached to one’s capacity to exercise ‘choice’ qua free choice within democracy; and

‘choice’ is the free individual’s operative par excellence. How to enable one’s capacity to participate in

democracy is then the fundamental question, but a question I am addressing here in terms of the

performance of the subject in subjection, not specifically within the structural methods of ‘participative

democracy’. It is one’s choice to participate that I am concerned with. Indeed, choice in democracy

can be viewed as the very instantiation of being free, and the opportunity for this ‘choice’ as the

location of the Being of being free. In this paper it is specifically this question of the moment

(encompassing both performance and location) of exercising a choice - this being free in a democratic

nation - I will explore, using Lacanian psychoanalysis of the ‘social imaginary’, with some hybrid

intervention, drawing on Melanie Klein. It is the psychotic function of this being free which concerns

me for its enabling of both the giving of the gift and the persuasion, of those who believe they give,

that their freedom is indeed had under the current operations of ‘coalition’ governments. Further, I

believe it is the function of the socio-psychoanalytic and the democratic non-dynamic - that is the lack

of ‘speaking back’, or lack of recognition of the voices of dissent and disruption as (precisely ‘free)

speech’ - which participates in this psychosis.

14 M. Sendak Where the Wild Things Are (Harper Collins, New York, 1984, 1963).

15 J. Derrida, Given Time:1. Counterfeit Money (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London,

1992).

16 The term ‘socio-psychoanalysis’ is hybridised from ‘socio-analysis’ to encapsulate the use of

psychoanalysis to analyse the social. The term ‘socio-analysis’ is used by some object relations

movements which analyse the social arrangements of organisations and groups. See Socio-Analysis

6

A: I The moment of choice

The moment of the articulation of the Western democratic subject as a subject of Western democracy is

the moment of performance of the self as a freely choosing being. It is the moment of performance,

either through enactment of voting, speaking against or speaking to, or it may be the moment of a lack

of objection to the limits of freedom exercised through the originary violence of democracy. Free

choice, as represented in the neo-liberalist discourses however, implies a choice initiated within the

capacities of the individual.17 This may be so, but the individual always already encounters a fierce

limit upon his freedom to choose. The individual must choose only within the intersubjective limits of

language, that is, he must be subject to. And, his very desire - the very orientation to the object of his

choice - takes on a significance through the significance of the Other. The problematics of making a

‘whole choice’, or what we might call an ‘absolutely free choice’ as a whole individual – one who is

supposedly separate of the corporate relations of community and the a priori processes of subject

formation - both limits the subject and instantiates the other as Other. In democracy, the other is the

Other who recognises the subject as desirable, that is, it is the perceived recognition (as desirable) the

subject imagines and symbolises. As Lacan has described, the Other ‘is the beyond in which the

recognition of desire is tied to the desire for recognition’.18 In democracy it is precisely this desirable

subject qua free subject – the subject who perceives itself as desirable because being free in democracy

is a desirable ontology for the Other - who recognises himself as free and chooses (performs as free)

accordingly.

The moment of the subject’s formation in relation to his desires and desirability in the face of the

Other, is well articulated by Desmond Manderson in his discussion of Maurice Sendak’s children’s

17 This is particularly evident in postcolonial discussion of the ‘woman’ as the free individual of

Western feminist movements. As Gayatri Spivak suggests ‘feminist individualism in the age of

imperialism, is precisely the making of human beings, the constitution and “interpellation” of the

subject not only as an individual but also as “individualist”.’ G. C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial

Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. (Harvard University Press, USA, 1999), p.116.The

West, Spivak suggests, has an ‘isolationist admiration’ p.246. See G.S. Spivak, ‘Three Women’s Texts

and a Critique of Imperialism’, Critical Inquiry (1985), pp.242-61.

18 J.Lacan, ‘The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious’, Ecrits: A Selection. (USA, 2002), p.163.

7

book Where the Wild Things Are.19For Manderson, the journey of the protagonist of the book - the

child Max’s journey - is the recognition of the instantiation of law qua ‘justice’. Manderson’s

description, mutatis mutandis, is helpful to understand the instantiation of the praxis of the subject of

democracy qua free choice. Max, having being described as a ‘wild thing’ by his mother, wants to

wear his ‘wolf suit’, brandish his fork at the family dog and ‘eat [his mother] up’. His needs are

thwarted however, when she responds to his (cannibalistic – and arguably oedipal) statement with a

metonymic ‘no’ in the form of sending him to bed without supper. Max then journeys across the ocean

in his mind and his boat (called ‘Max’) to a narcissistic fantasy land where the ‘wild things’ do all that

he needs; one could say they perform his needs. Max is quickly lonely and dissatisfied with this and

returns to his bedroom to find his supper waiting for him. He then removes his ‘wolf suit’ and appears

to relinquish his wildness or, one could argue, his freedom.

Max’s Mother, having exercised the ‘no’ as, what Lacan would describe, the ‘paternal function’,20

offers him supper (and arguably her care) as a substitute for his loss of ‘wildness’. Through his

removal of his wolf suit, as Manderson describes,21 Max appears to accept the limits of the law as

justice, as fair. The desire of Max’s Mother (not to be eaten) becomes the needs of the Other; but Max

has lost something of himself. Arguably, he has lost elements of his freedom. Manderson’s suggestion

is that Max now recognises that there are limits to the achievement of his needs in an intersubjective

world.22 He relinquishes much of his narcissistic orientation in the interests of achieving harmony, and

arguably love, with an-other. He becomes what he perceives the Other wants him to be. His ‘free

choice’ as a wild thing is subjectivised through the moment of encounter with the needs of an-other by

being subjected to his desire for the desire of the Other. His freedom is compromised, and what

19 D.Manderson, 'From Hunger to Love: Myths of the source, interpretation, and constitution of law in

children's literature', Law and Literature 15 (2003). pp.87-142. (pagination 1-66, as referenced from

http://www.law.mcgill.ca/faculty/manderson-hunger.pdf).

20 J.Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire’, Ecrits: A Selection. (Norton,

USA, 2002), p 298.

21 Manderson, ‘Hunger’, p.55.

22 These are the limits of harm to another asserted by John Stuart Mill. See J.S.Mill, On Liberty, in G

Himmelfarb ed, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974).

8

remains and is apparently still understood as a ‘free choice’, if Max were a ‘normal neurotic’, would

become an object of constant question. Max has lost something of his freedom and, if he isn’t

traumatised to the point of psychosis through this moment, he will retain a question about this loss.

The difference between the hysteric (as a normal neurotic) and a psychotic exists precisely in how Max

will or will not accept the ‘no’. Max as a neurotic, at the point of loss, will wonder what he has lost;

just as West - if he too were an hysteric23 - at the point of encounter with the democracy of/as Other,

will question the loss instantiated through democratic rule qua law. The hysteric will question how the

law can be enacted upon him (and for him in the case of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’) while still

professing to offer freedom to him. It is West’s psychosis which dismantles this question. The

distinction between Max and West however, is precisely the question of the heterogeneity of subjects

before democracy and before socio-psychoanalysis. While Manderson suggests that Max accepts

‘justice’ as the limits of the law, we really do not know what Max has done with this limit, this ‘no’.

He, as the subject of socio-psychoanalysis,24 may be many subjects before this limit. I am suggesting

that West’s position is specific however. West assumes a psychotic position. As the subject of liberal

democracy - as desirable to the Other - West is a subject who appears not to retain the capacity to

wonder about the limits of the freedom he may, or may not, retain beyond the originary instantiation of

democracy. In contemporary times, he is not a subject who questions those limits.

B: 2 The psychotic’s choice

The subject of representational democracy is represented as a subject who can (and, in Australia, must

actively) perform a choice in respect to who will be his representative/s and how he will respond to the

actions of the democratically elected rulers. This choice is based upon the subject’s knowledge,

understanding, and contemplation of the issues. As a subject he is subject to, that is, he is influenced

23 The structures which define the subject in its relation to the Other, for Lacan, are the neurotic, pervert

and the psychotic. I am using the category of hysteric – as subset of neurosis - specifically to illustrate

the structure that would propel Max into a position of questioning what the Other wants from him.

24 Manderson is not strictly using a psychoanalytic reading in his explanation of Max’s subjectivity, but

his use of Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud, together with the representation of Max as the subject

before ‘justice’, observes similar parameters and methodologies to socio-psychoanalysis and, as I will

explain later, is vulnerable to the same critique. Manderson, ‘Hunger’, pp. 35, 39.

9

or, subjectivised through the articulation of the politics, persona, and presence of the party or particular

politician, with its own desires. Just as Max internalises those of his m/Other, the subject will make his

choice based on the desires which are the desires of the Other. In a political arena, in the arena of

democratic politics, the articulation of the desires of the subject (who mis-recognises himself) with the

choice he makes, will operate in recognition of the values of the Other. Just as Max will not ‘eat his

mother up’, he will accept his supper as a substitute for his ‘wildness’ because it articulates with what

he perceives the m/Other to want, and thus secures her love and desire. Like Max, the subject wants the

desire of the Other and will represent himself as able to choose - perform his gestures to have himself

recognised – in regard to whatever the perception, the ontological recognition, of the desires of the

Other are to the subject - and this perception is the limits of his individuality. West, the adult-

choosing-subject, and Max the child-subject, will perform as desirable (and desiring) subjects in the

democratic landscape in order to be recognised as the desired subjects for the Other. The Other is not a

fixed Other however, indeed it is precisely the Other’s very ‘subjectiveness’, the way the subject

interprets the Other, which arguably forms the substance of the very thing called ‘individuality’; the

choice of the individual. West does not simply staple his desirability to a fixed, consistent desirer –

even God and the law vary in interpretation. West will respond to the hail of the m/Other qua God,

language, law and/or the nation-state, through the limits of the discursive representation of what it is to

be an ideal, subject.25 And these limits are founded on the culturally contingent production of what it is

to be an ideal subject in West’s world.

B: 3 West’s (psychotic, free) World

West’s contemporary world is the world of the subject of the ‘coalition of the willing’, a world where

the tropes of liberal democracy reign supreme and West’s body, indeed West’s actions as a democratic

subject, both signify and are signified through these tropes. This is to say no more in effect than West

25 The ‘ideal’ subject implies an enactment of the subject in relation to the ‘Ideal-Ego’ for Lacan. The

subject who (mis)recognises itself as Ideal or desired (in the mirror) to the Other. The Other can be

understood as that which is ‘in possession of the code’, a code which is perceived, or understood or

imagined by the subject, to define the coordinates of his/her desirability. This function can exist in any

other or structure for the subject, such as a parent, law, God, teacher etc. J.Lacan, ‘The Direction of the

Treatment and the Principles of its Power’, Ecrits: A Selection (Norton, USA, 2002) p. 222.

10

is an empty subject and functions as an ‘individual’ produced through hegemonic discourse and votes

and/or exercises his democratic rights to be free accordingly. As Renata Salecl has explained the

democratic subject using Immanuel Kant:

The Kantian notion of the abstract, empty subject can be used to

establish the theoretical basis for democracy. The essence of

democracy is that it can never be made to the measure of concrete

human beings: the basis of democracy is the subject as a pure empty

place. Democracy is always only a formal link between abstract

subjects.26

The ‘link’ between subjects is rendered ‘formal’ through their participation in democracy as ‘voters’

(or potential voters) with more or less participation in the acquisition of knowledge about their vote of

choice. The subtleties of the hegemonic discourses of democracy - the qualities that link people less

formally - being propagated through language and dispersed from the moment West’s infantile cry

might have been signified as the demand to ‘be free’ of his cot, stroller, or sister’s (too loving) arms.

West can link himself formally to the democratic community, but his identification as a desirable

subject in the imagined gaze of the Other requires a further performance as a particular type of

democratic subject - a desiring, choosing, freely being subject.

In the contemporary West the discourses of freedom permeate the being of the democratic subject as a

being in a state of being free. The propagation of the performance of a necessarily free subjectivity

enacting and enjoying its freedom through democracy is less a desire than a dictum in countries such as

the US and Australia in these times of ‘war and/on terror’. Witness the vitriol and (almost lethal)

aggression perpetrated towards David Hicks (Australia), Richard Belmar (GB), and the (unproved)

suspicion of Chaplain Yee (US), as committing espionage – betraying his free country. These are all

men who could be ‘free’ in the West but have pursued a Muslim life; a life that is represented in the

West as antithetical to a state of freedom. These men have allied themselves to a religion which, in the

West, evokes images of violent punishment and strict adherence to an ‘unfree’ lifestyle. The Muslim

lifestyle is represented as demanding adherence to clothing codes, sexual standards and religious

practice; standards which, if transgressed, are said to result in ‘barbaric’ punishment. The free subject

26 R. Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism.

(Routledge, New York, 1994), p.5, (my emphasis).

11

must perform as a free subject and enjoy his freedom accordingly. West, the man, must align himself

to the dictates of freedom in the West and indeed to the very country which espouses that it has so

much freedom, it has freedom to give. West, as a democratic subject, must do more than formally

link himself to a community through voting, his subjectivity must articulate with the qualities of the

free subject of Western democracy. As Salecl explains:

The invention of democracy brought with it the notion of a forced

choice and a sacrifice the subject has to make in order to become a

member of a community. The social contract, which incorporated the

subject into symbolic community, is linked to the subject having to

make a choice. The subject has to choose freely to become a member

of the community, but this choice is always a forced choice – if the

subject does not choose community, it excludes itself from the society

and falls into psychosis.27

Salecl’s configuration suggests that psychosis is the state for those that do not choose to link

themselves to community, but she does not mean formally link; in fact, precisely not a formal link.

One can choose not to vote or exercise their democratic rights as a participant in representational

democracy, but psychosis implies a ‘not choosing’ the intersubjective associations of community; not

choosing to adhere to the social meanings of language. The choice is always already made for the

psychotic. The psychotic, according to Lacan, does not accept the ‘Name-of-the-Father’ through

castration, that is, they do not accept that language has a paternity, a meaning prior to their

signification. We could say that the psychotic father’s his own language.28 Thus, a psychotic can

certainly vote and exercise his democratic rights to speak in respect to the rule of the nation, but his

psychosis is betrayed in his foreclosure on the socially coded significance of that act. The psychotic,

like the despotic sovereign, makes his own meanings. And, this, I will argue, is the condition of West!

B: 4 Freedom and psychosis

27 Op. cit., p. 126, (italics in original, underline my emphasis).

28 J. Lacan, The Psychoses: Seminar III Jacques-Alain Miller ed. (Norton, New York, 2001); J. Lacan,

‘On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis’ Ecrits: A Selection (Norton, USA,

2002). I have taken some liberty in summarising Lacan’s explanation of psychosis in the interest of

economics and comprehension for the reader.

12

The contemporary discourses on freedom, which assume a ‘givenness’ to the ontological experience of

freedom in the West, articulate with a Lacanian configuration of psychosis. For the psychotic West

meaning is made of freedom as if it had no paternity prior to an explanation offered through the

characterisation of objects/products as being freedom. The products do not simply ‘equal’ freedom but

they are freedom insofar as they represent choice and freedom as a state. They are called freedom and

they exist as available and are therefore freely choosable. Freedom is blue jeans, it is cars, it is

perfume, it is voting, it is simply being in the democratic nation. Its fragmented and floating

signifying structure could be argued to be as erroneous as the Nation-Thing described by Slavoj

Zizek,29 that is, it could be anything; but for the fact that it’s not anything, it is everything within the

democratic nation. It is everything that articulates with the subject’s interpretation of what the Other

wants. Like the popularised notion of the name allocated the sex-worker - it is whatever we need it to

be!

The significance offered freedom, in contemporary liberal discourse which advocates democracy as the

spearhead of freedom, articulates with all forms of symbolic association within that democracy. Like

Freud’s ‘kettle argument’: a man who borrows the kettle denies he has returned it with a hole in it using

three logic(s); logics which are all reasonable, and yet contradictory.30 It has no hole; it already had a

hole; I never borrowed the kettle. This too is the signifying structure of freedom.31 Hence George W.

Bush can advocate war to bring a ‘democratic revolution’ in the Middle East with: ‘We seek the

advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings’32. He can locate peace/war/freedom/democracy

as if they are the same thing(s) and somehow not at all contradictory. Indeed, he receives commitment

29 S. Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology, (North Carolina,

Duke University Press, 1993), particularly pp.200-202.

30 S. Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, (Allen & Unwin, New York, 1932).

31 Zizek has also suggested that Freud’s joke is analogous of the contradictory argument(s) George W.

Bush used to justify the invasion into Iraq. My use of it here is intended to be complimentary to

Zizek’s argument, not in disagreement. See S. Zizek, Iraq and the Borrowed Kettle, (Verso Books,

New York, 2004)

32 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3282465.stm; Bush sets out 'mission for freedom', BBC News,

Nov 19, 2003.

13

of military troops from Britain, a royal welcome and resounding applause from the British people for

this psychotic request. Freedom’s symbolic associations in property and praxis are often convenient

and contradictory. They adhere to a psychotic non-paternity which denies any possibility of social

signification beyond the moment. Advancing freedom is war; advancing freedom is peace; advancing

freedom is democracy as freedom itself. No problem. The product/gift based signifying structure of

freedom in this context disables the question to the Other – who would question the benefits of freedom

and peace? Certainly, no subject who wants the desire of the nation-state-Other. And Bush’s

‘incalculable’ gift/advance thus takes on a psychotic significance. The explanation of freedom does not

have to ‘make sense’, it simply has to meet absolutely and without question with the perceived desire

of the Other, or the perceived demand of what the Other wants. This is both the condition of the

commodity ‘freedom’ that can be purchased, and the excess freedom which can be given, or we might

say, advanced.

Bush gives the freedom the US has to the Middle-East using the explanation of a democratic system,

links to an (unsanctioned) global free-market, secular government and choice of religion as that

freedom. Aside from the reality of many people being unable to vote in the US33 and being unable to

comment regarding the rule of the nation, the originary violence of democracy itself surely invalidates

the notion of free choice, free speech, the very being of free. Indeed, protective representative

democracy is secured through the law as a condition which must adhere to its own laws, unlike the

despotic sovereign. Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida have argued however, that the violence of its

instantiation is antithetical to its premise, (or promise) of democratic rule; or, that democracy precisely

inheres a violence. As Derrida argues, there is no democracy (in terms of those that have been deemed

to have arrived) worthy of the name.34 The instantiation of democracy and free choice through the

violence of military invasion and maintenance, coupled with the disregard for the free speech uttered

by ‘the people’ in ‘coalition of the willing’ nations, surely suggests a sovereign-like paternity to the

33 Specifically in reference to people who have been imprisoned for criminal offences in some states of

the US.

34 J. Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, Cardozo Law Review.Vol 11

(1990) p. 1013; W. Benjamin ‘Critique of Violence’, Reflections – Walter Benjamin, Essays,

Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, (Schocken Books, New York, 1986).

14

concept of freedom. It is what we make of it in response to what we think we need to be for the Other,

(or, the freedom/kettle is whatever I want it to be!) The significance of freedom is then retroactively

instantiated in democratic nations, however. It is as if freedom had a complex paternity that existed

prior to its presentation as something the nations of the ‘coalition of the willing’ had to give. And, this

is the sovereign moment of the psychotic. West makes meaning according to the application of a self-

fulfilling and contradictory logic. He can retroactively signify his forced choice, as a democratic

subject, as a free choice through representing freedom as some-thing he always already has, something

he chose! And, if he can’t afford it, then this is his responsibility as a desirable/desiring subject for the

Other.35

Like Max, his supper now signified as ‘wild’, maintains the ‘I he takes himself to be’ as a ‘wild thing’,

as a ‘wild I’. The free subject West ‘takes himself to be free’ through a psychotic leap which

announces his forced participation in democracy (whether he votes or not) as a ‘free choice’; like the

infant whose needs are subjectivised through language as articulating with the recognition of the Other.

But Max, as a ‘normal neurotic’, evinces a wry, Mona Lisa-like smile which may indicate that he

knows that supper isn’t really a ‘wild thing’, that his freedom is still in question. West, in his

acquiescence to democracy and perhaps even the ‘war on Iraq’, appears not to know this. The signified

status of freedom is assumed and thus foreclosed, and subject West of democracy is maintained as a

psychotic, but nonetheless ‘free I’.

A: The psychotic freedom of the sovereign

This psychosis is evident if we make the necessary changes to Derrida’s use of Madame de

Maintenon’s letter to Madame Brinon regarding her time. Maintenon writes ‘The King takes all my

time; I give the rest to Saint-Cyr, to whom I would like to give it all.’36 Maintenon’s relation to time

35 The argument that the subject is imbued with a fantasy of its responsibility (particularly under

Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies in Britain in the 1980s) has been well developed by Zizek in his

discussion of the ‘fantasy’ presented by Thatcher that all British citizens could be, would be wealthy if

only they exercised their ‘good British’ capacity as individuals to be so, thus it was their fault if they

were not wealthy. See Zizek, ‘Tarrying’.

15

displays some obviously ‘psychotic’ or perhaps simply ‘mad’ elements. She believes she both has time

to give while all her time has been taken from her by the King. As Derrida suggests ‘by all good logic

and by good economics’37 she has no time once the King has taken it. The same can be suggested of

freedom. If the freedom of choice to participate in democratic society is a forced choice, as Salecl

suggests, then what is the freedom that the subject supposedly has, in respect to the freedom to choose

within a democratic state? One could say the subject has other freedoms, but this is not the rhetoric of

George W. Bush in respect to Iraq, and indeed democracy is linked to freedom insofar as one is

regarded as being in a state of freedom if one is a being in a free democratic state. The metonymic

relation of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the West is as intimate as Max’s Mother’s survival and her

‘no’. Indeed, in research obtained by Freedom House, the ‘Map of Freedom 2002’ the organisation

produced, ‘tracks’ democracy and interprets its findings in terms of nations that are ‘free’ ‘partly free’

and ‘not free’.38 John Howard goes further and describes ‘liberty and freedom’ in terms of ‘the

democratic way of life’.39 In the West ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ stand in for each other (and Howard

adds a dash of ‘liberty’ for good measure). Democracy as free choice and free market is precisely the

significance offered the freedom given to the people of Iraq and, in recognition of the originary

violence of democracy, the ‘forced choice’ described by Salecl. West, the man, whose psychotic

subjectivity is currently being militarily dispersed to an apparently free Iraq, could easily write: ‘The

democratic state takes all my freedom, I give the rest to the ‘I’ I take myself to be, (via an orientalisng

logic,40 and blue jeans) to whom I would like to give it all.’ Of course, if freedom is democracy, then

this statement is precisely a madness. How can the democratic state both be and take West’s freedom?

West, the man, maintains the recognition of himself as a free subject, in the face of the confusion of

metonyms and the violence of democracy, through a psychotic leap. West can maintain the ‘I [he]

takes himself to be’ as a ‘free I’ through the representation of himself as having freedom to give, and

this is the freedom he can apparently give Iraq. In giving to them he is simultaneously giving - via the

logic of Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ - this freedom to himself. If he can give freedom to those who

don’t have it, by all ‘good logic’, he must have freedom to give. What defies ‘good logic’ is his having

in the first place. As Derrida suggests, one gives:

16

seeking through the gesture of the gift to constitute its own unity and,

precisely, to get its own identity recognized so that that identity comes

back to it, so that it can reappropriate its identity: as its property.41

This is achieved firstly through an identification of others as ‘not free’ – notably Freedom House’s

‘Map of Freedom 2002’ - but perhaps more significantly, as an identification of himself as being free;

as being able to give to himself. And it is here that the purchase of chosen ‘freedom’ items for himself

enable a representation of freedom as both had and haveable as a commodity. West can acquire

freedom and do with it what he chooses. It is his to have. This is the identification of himself in the

gaze of the Other; but this is a psychotic relation.

The subject’s orientation towards freedom in the free West - via his identification of himself as

desirable to the Other - is psychotic insofar as it denies the question of the significance of freedom. It

denies a question to the Other. The position which West might have adopted – like the uncertainty

evidenced in Max’s wry smile – is a neurotic relation to the Other. The neurotic embodies a question

as to what the Other wants. West, the neurotic man, would ask in a democratic nation “how can I really

be a free subject?” or, “Is what I’m doing really enacting freedom?” The status of freedom in

signification is necessarily problematised for the neurotic. In the contemporary conditions in the West

post ‘September 11’ which have produced an environment of ‘terror’ (of course we’re never sure

whose terror it is) the ability to maintain a question for West, regarding whether he is or isn’t free,

36 Derrida, ‘Given Time’, p.1.

37 Op. cit., p.2.

38 http://www.freedomhouse.org/pdf_docs/research/freeworld/2002/map2002.pdf;

Map of Freedom 2002, Dec 9, 2004.

39 http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech532.html; Transcript of Prime Minister the Hon John

Howard MP Address at the National Remembrance Service Honoring The, Victims of the Terrorist

Attacks in Bali, Great Hall, Parliament House, Canberra. October 16, 2003.

40 The ‘orientalisng logic’ I am referring to here is taken from Edward Said’s complex discussion of the

logics of ‘Orientalism’. E. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Penguin Books, New

York, 1978)

41 Derrida, ‘Given Time’, pp.10-11.

17

suffers an assault. An assault that forces West into a state of psychosis. The psychotic, according to

Lacan, has no question to the Other. The psychotic knows what the Other wants, knows exactly what

things mean. The psychotic suffers no confusion as to the relationship of signifier to signified and

hence forecloses on the lack in the Other.

The subject who would experience its freedom as a forced choice in the democratic nation

acknowledges, even if only fleetingly as a reflection of unconscious understanding, that the nation has

lack, that the nation wants something from it in order to function as a democratic nation. But the

subject who then perceives that it has freedom to give, even though its freedom is forced, forecloses on

the lack in the Other and thus perceives a givenness to the significance of freedom. The very act of

recognising oneself as choosing, purchasing and/or advancing – a gift for others or oneself - implies an

act of giving (to the democratic nation) as an absolutely economic moment; that is, as if the subject gets

back exactly what he gives, with no lack on either part. This is both an issue of product purchase and

enacting the (recognition of) freedom to purchase through being a democratic subject. West is a

democratic subject because he votes, and the nation is democratic because he votes. Neither lacks!

And, the questionable experience of effective participation in this regime, that is, the question of the

meaning of the exercising of free choice as a democratic subject remains unproblematised; it remains

unquestioned. It remains unthought about.

Signifier freedom and signified freedom, thus collapsed into a knowing what freedom is, enable the

formulation of being free, for the psychotic subject, as anything which explains their contemporary

situation and reformulates their situation into one in which they are the ‘good’ and ‘right’ ones. This is

evident particularly in the representation of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind whose psychosis, in one

form, offers him the representation of himself as saving the US from infiltration by communist forces.42

Similarly Judge Schreber, the quintessential psychotic for Freud and Lacan, imagines - at the point of

his fully developed psychosis - that he is God’s partner and that he will (re)populate the world through

his union with God.43 This can be easily extrapolated in Bush’s logic in terms of the ‘war on terror’ as a

response to ‘Sept 11’, as a pre-emptive response to the ‘envy’ others have of the goodness of the West.

18

And, as a goodness enacted through a war on badness – terror holding an already existing ‘bad’ place

in the social imaginary of the West and being retroactively signified as ‘bad’ through the specific

labelling of death and destruction as ‘terrorist acts’. This goodness is further evidenced in the

description of the invasion of Iraq as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, as if the US is doing a ‘good thing’

with its ‘goodness’. Anti-Apartheid, Civil Rights and anti-slavery movements together with Tommy

Hilfiger products already signifying ‘freedom’ as ‘good’ and Operation Iraqi Freedom retroactively

adds to this signification by virtue of metonymic association. Doing good things with one’s goodness

is also the condition of the very ordinary subject West in relation to his participation in representational

democracy. His goodness is in recognising himself as being free – voting/choosing to vote/

recognising the choice – and thereby giving to the Other. The democratic nation takes all his freedom

to be otherwise, but still he believes he has freedom to give (either to himself, others or the Other).

B: 2 West and hegemony

West forecloses on the moment of traumatic encounter with the possibility of not having freedom or of

not being free. The ‘I’ West takes himself to be is a free ‘I’ and this is maintained in the face of

contradictory examples of the exercising of freedom, such as the participation of West in democracy as

a free subject through a forced choice. Signifiers of freedom are then enlisted in the mode of the

psychotic to assist in the absolute assertion that West is what the Other wants. This is evidence of a

psychotic structure for Lacan. In strict Lacanian diagnosis West would have always been psychotic

and events - such as ‘September 11’ - just triggered the psychotic industry (the collapsing of meaning).

A Lacanian hybrid of Melanie Klein’s ‘object relations’ emphasis, which highlights the possible

transience of the psychotic subject, is, in my opinion, more helpful in diagnosing West’s current

condition. For Klein psychosis was not fixed, as it was for Lacan (and is for Kleinians and Lacanians

respectively), but indicative of an experience of extreme anxiety resulting in a kind of infantile retreat

into the paranoid-schizoid position; the position of absolute good and absolute bad, of life and death.44

42 R.Howard, A Beautiful Mind, (film) Universal Studios and DreamWorks, 2001.

43 S.Freud, Psycho-analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia

Paranoides), SE 12, (Penguin Freud Library, London, 1911); D. P. Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous

Illness, (New York Review Books, New York, 2000).

44 M. Klein, The Writings of Melanie Klein R. Money-Kyrle ed., (Free Press, New York, 1984).

19

Bush’s ‘you’re either with us or against us’ statement post ‘September 11’ emblematises such a state; a

place where there is no complexity, no ambivalence, no in-between. In this place there is no question

to the Other - using Lacan - and there is no thinking about what freedom is, or what freedom means.

For West, freedom thus becomes what object-relation psychoanalysts describe as an ‘unthought

known’, similar to a ‘master signifier’ for Lacanians. The ‘unthought known’ is an idea signified

through its articulated status as coming from the master’s discourse, or in contemporary ‘master

discourses’,45 emanating from the masters of liberal nations - George Bush in the US, Howard in

Australia. Freedom is enabled as ‘unthought (but somehow) known’ through both its status as gift

given to Iraq, as commodity choice, and through the foreclosure on the experience of a forced choice in

the place of a representation of a free choice.

West’s experience of infantile subjection enables an articulation of his subjectivity with the Other

through the representation of what the Other wants in the liberal discourse of the demands of

democracy. West, as a free subject, can take himself as the ‘free I he takes himself to be’ with the

assistance of the propagation of the ideal subjectivity being one which has freedom; freedom to give, at

that! It is when the parameters and demands of this mode of being come into conflict that the psychotic

function appears and West collapses signifier and signified to maintain the certain belief that he is the

‘I he takes himself to be’. For Lacan, the threats to the given status of the ‘I’ are the most traumatic of

all for the subject. Arguably, ‘Sept 11’ and subsequent dialogues in the West about the questionable

‘goodness’ of freedom as the free-market, and the free status of West facing possible ‘terrorist attacks’,

function as a threat to the ‘free-I-ness’ of West. When West hears statements such as those made by

Howard after the Bali bombings: ‘Perhaps we are more vulnerable than we imagined’,46 he feels a

threat to his I-ness. Indeed, his imaginary feels under attack, or perhaps in question. And this question

must be definitively answered; we could say it cannot be maintained as a question. These events and

discussions may have triggered a psychosis in relation to freedom. ‘Sept 11’ both metaphorised the

threat to the given status of the signifier freedom and metastasised the signification of freedom in

liberal discourse. An assertive maintenance of the ‘free I’ identification of West, lends some weight to

45 J. Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973, Encore: Book

XX, Jacques-Alain Miller ed. (Norton, New York, 1998) pp 16-17, 31-32.

46 http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech532.html; Howard ‘Transcript’. p 1.

20

the orientalist explanation of why the ‘coalition of the willing’, in the face of increasing awareness of

the impoverished status of their citizens, and aggressive restrictions on ‘freedom’ - through efforts such

as the Patriot Act 200147 in the US and the ASIO Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act 200348 in

Australia - would aggressively assert the need to go to war to give freedom to others. Indeed, the

symptom of the psychotic is the constant assertion of his truth to the Other. There is no question! West

does have freedom, and every purchase of jeans, perfume and cars, every vote (no matter how similar

the parties), every demonstration (no matter how ineffective), every experience of multiple brand

names in the supermarket, functions as an “I told you so!” (as if anyone was asking).

But people are asking, and here’s where socio-psychoanalysis and the hegemonic function of

democratic rule qua freedom discourse display their similar allegiance to the non-dynamic.

A: 1 Patient West’s Speech: the many (im)patient West’s

I heard the sound of freedom in Baghdad's Firdos Square.

…It sounds like machine gun fire.49

Freedom is not something to be thought about in the West and by West. But some people are thinking.

The voice of the hysteric, the voice of the normal neurotic, who questions their status as being free is

sometimes audible above the din of the purchase of a free subjectivity. A Western subjectivity is no

more absolute in its universal status than a free subjectivity. West, the psychotic subject of liberal,

democratic discourse is only one (type of) man; just as Manderson’s Max, is only one type of boy.

While I can suggest that hegemonic discourses mobilise the consent of many people in the West this is

not the same as saying that all these people are psychotic. As Gayatri Spivak has noted in respect to

47 USA Patriot Act 2001 (HR 3612)

48 The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act 2003

(Cwlth) amends the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 in July 2003 to enhance the

capacity of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to combat terrorism. As it states

‘The Act empowers ASIO to obtain a warrant to detain and question a person who may have

information important to the gathering of intelligence in relation to terrorist activity.’

49 http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=5270&sectionID=15; N. Klein, ‘Freedom

Fires’ ZNet, April 5, 2004.

21

Marxist and Psychoanalytic methodologies of analysis – to focus on something ‘on a higher level of

abstraction than the machinery, production, and performance of the mental theatre, and as obviously

global as capitalism’, is different from speaking of the pathology of the individual subject through a

critique which is so ‘culture-specific in its provenance’.50

Foreclosure is a diagnosis of the clinic of the psychotic in psychoanalysis. It appears in the fragments

and ruptures of the discourse of the analysand and while it may also appear in the fragments and

ruptures of the dominant discourse of the West, the West is not in analysis! Manderson’s Max, Salecl’s

democratic subject, and my West are similar in their representation as monolithic subjects. All possible

and useful representations of subjects, but even, insofar as there are a few represented here, we can say

that there is certainly more than one in world, even in the West. We can say that there is more than one

way of responding to the problematics of free, and/or forced choice in democracy. This is a question in

part of mandate but also of technique. While it is possible to offer some psychoanalytic explanation as

to the meanings of some social gestures, it is impossible to diagnose the social imaginary, any further

than saying that many things are said, emblematised, gestured to, a lot! And, some things emerge as

dominant. Just as it is not sufficient to say because many people have read Where the Wild Things Are

that we are all Max. Similarly, to give West a name exposes the ‘unary trait’ of the proper name; it is a

particular name of a particular subject and it hopefully exposes the pretentiousness of socio-

psychoanalysis. 51 Zizek’s attempts to diagnose the social imaginary through the analysis of dominant

signifiers, while fascinating and often insightful for their consideration of some types of behaviour,

have similarly been criticised by theorists such as Butler for their universalising of the psychoanalytic

50 G.C. Spivak, ‘Echo’, in D.Landry & G.Maclean, G eds., The Spivak Reader (Routledge, New York,

1996), p. 177.

22

subject.52 Most notably, his suggestion of the fear of the Real embodied in the image of Spielberg’s

Jaws suggests a relation to the Real that is constant and homogeneous. The problem is possibly the use

of psychoanalytic subject formation of the Real, imaginary and the symbolic as the articulation of

every subject, but certainly the suggestion of an absolute, universal relation to the Real. In the case of

West, it is a suggestion of a universal relation to the Real of the signifier freedom. While, I accept a

use of psychoanalysis as social critique is deeply flawed in its construction of all subjects formed with

and through this tripartite structure, however, if one is to use psychoanalysis then one must use

Psychoanalysis. One must consider that psychoanalysis was developed in and for the clinic, and that to

propose a diagnosis often takes years of dialogue with the patient. My concern here relates to the

suggestion of universal and isomorphic adherence to a signifier with only a limited analysis of some

public discourse. The suggestion, then subsequently formed, denies the possibility of a heterogeneity

of relationships to the symbolic, Real and imaginary. It denies the subject as subject. This denial is

precisely the problematics of a suggestion of both a psychotic relation to freedom and a democratic

relation to freedom. Just as one cannot say all subjects have a psychotic relation to freedom, one cannot

say that all subjects are ‘free’ in democracy by virtue of participating – to more or less degrees – in a

democratic system, or by purchasing ‘freedom’ products.

A: 2 Democracy and socio-psychoanalysis: the word of the master.

To suggest that freedom is collapsed into a socially floating, but subjectively fixed, status as had by the

Western subject, denies the very real experience and speech of people who suggest that they don’t have

the freedom espoused by the leaders of the ‘coalition of the willing’. To suggest that everyone believes

51 The research of Ghassan Hage and his use of socio-psychoanalysis to understand the implications of

his findings are largely an exception to this pretentiousness. This exceptionality is largely due to the

use of qualitative empirical research to back up his claims. Hage’s use of multiple responses from

interviewees in his research enables a complex account of his socio-psychoanalytic conclusions. It is

arguably his attachment of language to the particular subject interviewed which renders this work

complex and insightful. See G. Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural

Society. (Pluto Press, Australia, 1998)

52 J. Butler, E. Laclau, S. Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on

the Left. (Verso, London, 2000), p.26.

23

they are free is as aggressively monolithic as to suggest that the US has freedom to give. From the

position of discourse analysis it is problematic to suggest that the subject believes it is free; from the

position of democracy it is problematic to act as if everyone believes they are free. The problem of

both arrangements is the refusal to enable the ‘speaking back’ of the subject; the refusal to engage in a

participatory formulation of relationship. Simply, the refusal to engage in relationship! Arguably, this

may be more true of socio-psychoanalysis than the standard form of representational democracy;

indeed there is much to suggest that the peoples’ representatives must and do listen to the majority

(even if it’s only a particular kind) of the people. There is however, a lot to suggest that the socio-

psychoanalysis performed by social theorists, listens to only a particular voice of the subject. This

voice is the one that can be heard through news media, cinema, political speeches and sometimes

empirical research, or the one that can be seen in popular culture.

The problematic of the hearing of the subject is precisely explained by Spivak in her discussion of the

subaltern. The subaltern can utter, she says, but cannot speak, that is she cannot be heard. Her voice is

always already domesticated or assimilated into the modes of recognition of the listener as soon as she

speaks. 53 The subject who speaks in democracy can similarly be viewed as domesticated through the

mechanisms of democracy. Speaking, in democracy is represented as speaking assent to democracy. In

respect to the having of freedom in the democratic West, the location of the subject who questions – the

hysterical subject – is akin to the subaltern insofar as the voices of the hysteric are domesticated and

assimilated into dominant discourse as precisely emblematising the mechanisms of democracy. It is

important that the people speak ‘freely’ in democracy, as it is important that the analysand speak freely

to the analyst. In lazy psychoanalysis the ‘speaking back’, as dissent to the analyst’s interpretation of

the needs, wishes, desires, and actions of the analysand, is simply resistance. In contemporary

democratic politics the dissent to the will of the politicians is also simply resistance: resistance to the

dominant, resistance to the majority, resistance to the will of the people, but never the less a democratic

resistance.

53 G. C. Spivak, ‘Critique’ pp. 198-311; Spivak, Reader, p.289. ‘Domesticated’ is not Spivak’s term. It

is however, aptly used by S. Seth, ‘Liberalism and the Politics of (Multi)culture: or, Plurality is not

Difference.’ Postcolonial Studies Vol.4 No.1 (2001), pp 65-77.

24

When the ‘war on terror’ was quickly enacted through the ‘war on Iraq’ there was a great deal of

‘speaking back’ to the representatives of the governments of the ‘coalition of the willing’54 and an

assertive condemnation of these voices as marginal, militant and even encouraging terrorism;55 but

nevertheless free to do so. The democratic representatives police (and arrest),56 ignore and reconstruct

the actions and voices of the protesters, but the protesters should still believe they live freely within

democracy. Or, the nation takes all their freedom, the rest they should give to themselves (via the

Middle East). Indeed, in this psychotic landscape the voice of the hysteric is barely audible and

significantly re-presented as free. The hysteric who questions what the other wants from her57, who

questions who and what she is to the Other, and who questions what this freedom is that the West

thinks its giving to the people of the Middle East, is free to express her opinions. But her opinions are

assimilated in the language and sentiment of institutional democracy as reflecting the tropes of that

democracy and subjectivised through the representation of the hegemonic assertion of the desired

liberal subject as a free subject. The subject who does regard the desires of the Other (of liberal

democracy) as known, as absolute, as complete, is likely to accept the experience of freedom in the

West as anything and everywhere, without question. The subject who questions their status as free in

the free West assumes the position of the questioning hysteric. In psychoanalysis this is regarded as a

‘normal’, or what one might call ‘healthy’, position, but it is no accident that the ‘hysteric’ has taken on

a social significance as difficult, demanding and often ‘mentally ill’ in the contemporary West. A

psychotic West has become more palatable.

54 This is specifically in reference to the demonstrations/ protests/rallies held in many nations

identifying ‘with the US’ and participating in the invasion of Iraq.

55 PM John Howard’s response to the marches in Australia was that they would encourage terrorism as

they effectively condoned, in Howard’s opinion, the actions of Saddam Hussain.

56 At a rally protesting the ‘war in Iraq’ in Sydney, Australia, a permit was denied for the protest; police

presence was overwhelming and described by journalists as a ‘Think Blue Line’. Several protestors

were arrested when they attempted to cross this line in an effort to reach government buildings and

arguably, get an effect, of their ‘free speech’. ‘Thick Blue Line Works to Keep the Peace’, Sydney

Morning Herald April 3, 2003.

57 Women tend to be (not insignificantly) more often diagnosed as ‘hysterics’. This too poses a

question (or two), but one beyond the parameters of this article.

25

In group object relations psychoanalysis58 however, the hysteric, or indeed any subject who speaks (and

is not simply adhering to their own psychotic meanings), is regarded as speaking both their own needs

and desires, and the ‘truth’ of the group. The person who questions the performance, parameters or

methodology of the group is regarded as one who speaks for the group as much as for themselves. They

are regarded as speaking that which needs to be spoken in the group, and can thus be regarded as the

voice for the group, at that time. Any disruption to the ‘givenness’ of the group is likely not to be well

received however. Disruption and dissention challenges the very being of the group – who the

members of the group qua group itself, take themselves to be. Disruption suggests “there is more out

there we don’t know” and dissention suggests “there is more in here we don’t know”. In Lacanian

terms, these questions point to lack. Thus, the speaker is likely to speak these ‘truths’ surreptitiously,

or without assertiveness, and they are unlikely to, at least initially, gain the support of the majority.

The hysteric, who poses questions to the Other, takes up precisely this disruptive and seemingly

marginal position. Listening to and responding to the hysteric is precisely an undemocratic

methodology however. One member of the group can influence dramatically the processes of the

group. This person, because they are usually speaking against and disrupting the status quo of the

group, is generally not well regarded, that is, they are unlikely to be elected to anything by the group.

When the hysteric speaks her ‘questions’ it is largely the facilitator/ consultant/ therapist to the group

whose role it is to allow these questions to be heard - to be thought about - particularly if the groups

capacity is disabled by trauma(s). Indeed, it is thoughtful facilitation of a group which may prevent the

group falling further into the trauma of the question, or indeed falling further into the paranoid-schizoid

position and projecting the terror/badness ‘out there’. It is the maintenance of the question as a

question, rather than an attack, which enables what we could call a less psychotic relation of the subject

to its own subjection, to its/others intersubjective parameters. It is the gesture of Max’s Mother, a

gesture of care, understanding, compassion qua ‘supper’ (and not just that one time) which may prevent

Max from falling into psychosis.

58 Largely developed through the work of Wilfred Bion and practitioners and theorists from the

Tavistock Institute, London. W. Bion, Attention and Interpretation: a Scientific Approach to Insight in

Psycho-analysis and Groups (Tavistock Publications, London, 1970).

26

A: Conclusions

In popular Western discourse, the hysteric is generally regarded as the woman who needs to be slapped

or drugged; the person who is beyond societal convention (even if only for a moment) and requires

medical, if not military, attention. The contemporary emphasise on freedom as had through the

conditions of possibility for purchase, the representation of free choice - as opposed to forced choice -

within democracy, and the given of the gift of freedom to the Middle East, is disrupted by the question

of the hysteric to the Other. The question of what this freedom is that is had, or what it is to be free in

democracy. The psychotic’s relation to the Other, in respect to freedom, knows, or believes, that this

freedom is beyond question; that freedom is to be had in the possible possession of jeans, cars, perfume

etc. The psychotic’s freedom is simply being free as a trope of Western democracy. The psychotic

believes it has freedom to give, even though the democratic nation takes its freedom.

Democracy and socio-psychoanalysis both (mis)recognise the relation of the subject to its freedom

through an articulation of the dominant - of the heard - as the all. West may be psychotic in believing

that he has freedom to give, but his subjectivity is only a partial representation of the subject. The

uncomfortable ‘speaking back’ of the hysteric displays, not only the possibility of not all subjects

relating to freedom through psychosis, but the possibility of not all subjects relating as if they have

freedom in the democratic West, as if they’re freedom is always already a question. While the

psychotic hears the Other say ‘no, you ain’t nothin’ Honey if you ain’t free!’ and supper comes in the

form of rewards for compliance and warlike enthusiasm, the hysteric can hold the question of their

being free. How long they can hold it in the face of the terror of the nation’s leaders, splitting

goodness/badness and life/death without ambivalence, is quite another question. And this is indeed

something to be thought about.

27