Sigmund Freud and the people who hugged Volda Lawrence

Oct 07, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When you study that part of philosophy named “ontology,” then nothing irrational, illogical, inscrutable, inexplicable about human behaviour surprises you. The familiarity with ontology prepares you to accept the inherent mystery and congenital defect of Homo sapiens.
It is over a hundred years now that Austrian thinker, Sigmund Freud, shook up the world with some phenomenal theories about the nature of the human being. Over those hundred years, Freud, like Marx, continues to face both scholarly criticism and scholarly endorsement. Like Marx, the debate will go perhaps forever. I would admit those two names had a tremendous impact on my thinking and those two are among my favourite thinkers.
Studying Freud since I was sixteen, I would honestly admit that there are mistakes in many of his theories. I support the feminist assault on his philosophy that he did not study the psychology of women outside of the limitations of the era to which he belonged.
Whatever weaknesses you find in Freud, like Marx, there are compelling dimensions of their theories that offer us equally compelling blueprints in understanding ontology.
Freud is going to be in vogue once again with the rise of Trump. I believe no other philosopher currently explains why poor people would rejoice for Trump, an unashamed billionaire who doesn’t care for low income folks. It has to do with understanding the mass psychology of crowds and here Freud becomes required reading.
It is outside the scope of a newspaper article to explain, using Freud’s theories, why crowds of poor people cling to an authoritarian leader. I could point readers to a brilliant essay as a quick guide.
Authored by history professor, Eri Zaretsky, and titled, “The Mass Psychology of Trumpism” (London Review of Books, September 18, 2018), the piece provides a sound Freudian analysis of why crowds flock to leaders who really don’t care about them.
I stared intensely at the still photograph of the women (dozens of them) who hugged and canopied Volda Lawrence as she won the chairperson slot for the PNC. These were the faces of poor, low income and working class folks who should have no expectation about economic elevation from the current policies of their party in power now or after 2020 when Lawrence may very well succeed David Granger.
You may not believe it but it is true; the first thing that came to my mind as I watched that photograph is whether these women were vendors. I don’t know why that thought came into my mind but it did and I do believe some of them were vendors. Here is a sad story told by a poor vendor at the ongoing Commission of Inquiry into City Hall
She said Town Clerk (Royston King) instructed that an excavator be taken to the market to demolish vendors’ stands. She described how the machine repeatedly lashed against the fulcrum of the structure, destroying the stands and all of the goods the vendors would have bought to sell for the Christmas season.
She said she lost close to $300,000 in goods. “He trashed everything that was in that stall and broke them up. They hit the stands from the top with the excavator and all the glassware and so break up.”
The commission heard that the Clerk of Markets’ ranks invaded her place in front of the market where they took away sneakers, shoes and other footwear valued at over $400,000.
“The stalls were covered; they raise up the tarpaulin that cover the stall and take away most of my goods from the stall. They take away most of my goods that I had displayed at the stall that I paid a rent for and up to now I didn’t get back anything.”
How does one explain the psychology of these people? I am not saying that this particular vendor was one in the crowd that surrounded Volda Lawrence and hugged her but it is the poorer folks that go out in the torrid afternoon sun, and drain away their emotions and energy at the rallies and congresses of the PNC, PPP and AFC only to end up getting shafted and badly so.
How can a shameless middle class, elitist party like the AFC attract young people from lower income families to campaign for them?
This is the same party that called a woman with a doctorate in a science subject who never raised even one finger to campaign for them and told her they have selected her to be the Minister of the Environment.
This is the same party these poor youths told me chased them away when they asked for employment after 2015. Read Freud to understand the psychology of the masses. Please do!

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Sigmund Freud and the people who hugged Volda Lawrence

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