If life is a
stage, like Shakespeare wrote, then life in the academic world is also a stage.
I interviewed eight doctoral students at Stockholm University for a Master thesis in
Sociology. The study was presented to the interviewees as a study of the
experiences of students in doctoral education with focus on the worst and best
experience. Due to what the doctoral students told me I called my text: ”Education Blues: A Study of the Emotional Roller
Coaster Ride of Ph.D. Education”
(Berggren
2012).
In the Master thesis I used
Sociology of emotions, in the manner the micro sociologist Thomas Scheff (1990)
has used it, concentrating of experienced feelings of shame, to analyze the
students experiences. In this text I will explore how Sigmund Freud’s notions of
guilt and anxiety in explaining neurotic symptoms works on some of the
empirical material from the Magister thesis. As a background the concepts of
Ego, Super-Ego and Id are discussed to describe how Freud sees the interlacing
of these concepts and how they work in producing guilt and anxiety.
Anna’s case >
In this text I will use some quotes
from one of the interviews in the thesis. Anna seemed to be a person who knows
what she wants – she
asked to be given an alias based on Anna Lindhagen, a Swedish social democratic
politician and women's right activist. Anna tells a story of her very first
text seminar, where she got a very thorough criticism on the paper she presented,
went home and was in bed crying for two days until the supervisor phoned her
and told her that it had not been a bad seminar. “Come back, we don’t hate you! We just expected more from you!”
It was a grim experience for Anna
who was used to being “best
in class” both in
high school and at basic level and now had met all the other doctoral students
who also were “best in
class”. Anna had not
anticipated how the seminar was structured, and what was going to happen during
it.
Anna “isolated”
herself by disappearing from the
scene where she experienced her shame and tried to handle her “helpless anger”. Anna had given up her possibility to relate to the
other, i.e. the critical voices in the seminar, which were identified as
dangerous or repulsive. In circumstances like this you may stop hearing the
other, and hear only your self, and as a continuation may have experienced a
feeling of outmost loneliness.
Anna is convinced that the best moment during her
studies was when she sat down after her oral presentation of her Ph.D. thesis
and watched the members of the examiners´
board leave in order to discuss her
dissertation:
I don’t remember much from the oral presentation. It was like… you may say that I was inside a bubble, terribly nervous. But… my auto pilot must have been on, because my friends told me afterwards that I had been really good. As I became
aware of what was happening around me I really felt good. /Anna
(Berggren
2012)
Anna describes
the feeling of coming out of the bubble and a good feeling sweeping over her,
after a severe experience of nervousness the moment before.
Discussion > Freud
(2005) discusses the sources of anxiety in “The Ego and the Id”, a text from 1923. Freud (2005) argues that the ego
may be regarded as a creature owing service to three masters and consequently
menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the libido of the id,
and from the severity of the super ego. Three kinds of anxiety correspond to
these three dangers, since anxiety is the expression of a retreat from danger
(Freud 2005:476). Freud's
argument is constructed with his model of how the human self is working as a
back drop: According to Freud there is the Super-Ego (on a preconscious level)
and the Id (on an unconscious level). The Ego, then, is present on the
conscious level – corresponding
to the external world, or reality, which bombards the Ego with impressions.
Since Freud is describing the Ego as owing service to three masters the Ego
consequently is influenced by thoughts, memories or hunches from the Super-Ego
on the preconscious level and the Id on the unconscious level. The effect these
influences have on the self may the said to give the self three dimensions that
constantly influence each other. The task for the individual is to learn how to
navigate within these dimensions.
Anna's reaction to the criticism during her first text
seminar might be due to a very hard criticism, or, it might have to do with
that Anna’s image of
herself became fractured. She had thought of herself a “best in class”- student. Due to her prowess during her earlier
education my interpretation is that she was not accustomed to that other
students really had anything to say about her work. Freud (2005) argues that
the tension between the demands of conscience and the actual performances of
the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt. Social feelings rest on
identifications with other people, on the basis of having the same ego ideal
(Freud 2005:460). In Anna's case the root of her experiencing her “low”
emotions was in a freudian
interpretation the discrepancy between her performance at the seminar and what
she had expected to do. Anna reacting as she did may be described as her being
exposed to two threats: The first one is that it might have occurred very hard
criticism, on a conscious level, the second is that, on a unconscious level the
unsuspected critique might have stirred something in her Id or in her
Super-Ego, making her flee the “battle”
in the seminar.
Freud (2005)
writes that it is possible to speak of an “unconscious sense of guilt”, that in case of neuroses puts the most powerful
obstacles in the way of recovery. Freud means that not only what is lowest but
also what is highest in the ego can be unconscious. It is as if we were thus
supplied with a proof of what we have just asserted of the conscious ego: that
it is first and foremost a body-ego (Freud 2005: 451-452). It is my impression
that Freud sees that emotions of guilt and anxiety may be said to exist all the
time, they rest latently in the Super-Ego or the Id, just waiting for a trigger
to unleash them, either by something that happens on the conscious level, or on
the unconscious. It is interesting that Freud believes that the unconscious
does not distinguish between what is lowest and highest. It seems that Freud
draws a clear border between what is the conscious ego and what is not,
claiming that it is first and foremost a body ego. The ego should then not
exist outside the human body.
An
interpretation of the normal, conscious sense of guilt (on the conscience
level) presents no difficulties Freud argues (2005); it is based on the tension
between the Ego and the Ego ideal (the perfect presentation of the Ego that the
Ego strives for) and is the expression of a condemnation of the Ego by its
critical agency. The feelings of inferiority so well known in neurotics are
presumably not far removed from it. It is possible to discover the repressed
impulses that really are at the bottom of the sense of guilt (Freud 2005:471).
An interpretation of Anna’s reaction along this line of thought would render the
idea that the reaction was due to the discrepancy between Anna´s view of her the Ego ideal and her Ego. Maybe she
expected herself to handle the situation at the seminar whatever happened, but
was overtaken by emotions when she was surprised by more (or/and harder)
criticism than she had anticipated, which in turn led her to be filled with the
earlier repressed impulses of guilt, causing her to leave.
Anna´s reaction during her oral defense of her dissertation
is interesting, it seems like she was bracing herself to the extent that she
repressed the Ego, so she found herself in a bubble, not really conscious of
what was happening.
It
was like… you may say that I was inside a bubble, terribly nervous. But… my auto pilot must have
been on, because my friends told me afterwards that I had been really
good. /Anna (Berggren
2012)
As I read the above excerpt from
the interview with Anna I begin to think that the “auto pilot”
Anna is talking about really is her
Super-Ego having taken charge of the situation. The ego is the actual seat of
anxiety Freud (2005) argues. Threatened by dangers it develops the
flight-reflex (Freud 2005: 477). Looking at Anna´s reactions both at the initial text seminar and at
her oral defense she may the said to deploy a flight-reflex in both cases. At
the text seminar she really fled and went home. At her oral defense her
nervousness makes her lock out everything that would disturb her from doing
what she was supposed to do in front of the examiners´
board. By blocking out the
conscious and unconsciously leaving just a narrow strand of consciousness to
admit her to listen to the opponent and answer questions on her work, not allowing
her to think about the importance of the situation.
The way Freud (2005) explains how
anxiety develops is by taking the example of how fear of death works. “We know that the fear of death makes its appearance
under two conditions (which, moreover, are entirely analogous to situations in
which other kinds of anxiety develop), namely, as a reaction to an external
danger and as an internal process, as for instance in melancholia. Once again a
neurotic manifestation may help us to understand a normal one”
(Freud 2005:478). Whether Anna, in
the two episodes of her doctoral studies referred to here, was reacting to
external danger or reacting as a result of her own internal processes is two
interesting points of view that may shed two different sets of light on what
really happened to her. Or, what she made happen to herself.
Freud (2005)
points out that, in severe cases, common neurotic anxiety is reinforced by the
generating of
anxiety between the ego and the super-ego (Freud 2005:478). The triad of Ego,
Super-Ego and Id is thus described as a selfregulating anxiety generator. I
guess the most common case is a mild case of insomnia, when I have an important
meeting next morning and know that I need your sleep. I toss and turn in my
bed, thinking: “It is two o'clock and I have to get up soon, it is three o'clock and I have to get up soon.”
In that case I create my own
anxiety and even enhance it.
Final
comments > Having
made an attempt at exploring how Sigmund Freud´s notions of guilt and anxiety in explaining neurotic
symptoms works on the empirical material that was originally collected for a
Magister thesis in Sociology I think that with more reading and more attempts
trying out Freud´s way
of thinking it might work. I was surprised to find that the concepts of Ego,
Super-Ego and the Id gave some sort of three dimensional explanatory models, on
the reasons why a person might (have to) act in a specific manner. On the
whole, whatever we may call the building blocks of the emotional spectrum;
shame, guilt or anxiety, it is a fascinating and inescapable part of us being
human.
It was also interesting to see how I described Anna's reactions as “causing”
and “making”
her take action. Looking at Freud´s theoretical arguments, all that “causes”
us to act have their origins within
us, even if we react to external stimuli. Someone yelling at me may “cause”
me to get angry, sad or wanting to
flee the field. What starts my reaction is a sense of threat, and I am agreeing
with Freud there. A point of view with roots in Natural Science may argue that:
The threat makes my adrenaline start pumping, but I really have a choice to
choose between staying or going. If I stay and do not yell back, my adrenaline
may make me feel ill, since I a not really using it to flee or fight.
------------
Literature
Berggren, Uffe. 2012. Education Blues: A Study of the Emotional Roller
Coaster Ride of Ph.D. Education. Student paper,
Stockholm University.
Freud, Sigmund. 2005 [1986]. The essentials
of psycho-analysis. London:
Vintage
Scheff, Thomas J.
1990. Microsociology:
discourse, emotion, and social structure. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press
