by Dr Emer Rutledge

In his essay written in 1932 Why War? Freud tells us “conflicts of interest between man and man are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to violence.” However “brute force can be overcome by union. The union of the people must be permanent and well organised; it must enact rules to meet the risk of possible revolts; must set up machinery ensuring that its rules- the laws- are observed and that such acts of violence as the laws demand are truly carried out. The recognition of a community of interests engenders among the members of the group a sentiment of unity and fraternal solidarity which constitutes its real strength.” For Freud the kernel of the matter therefore is “the suppression of brute force by the transfer of power to a larger combination, founded on the community of sentiments linking up its members.”

The notion of unity of harmony amongst families, neighbours, races, peoples, nations is precarious. In this newly fledged state “there exists two factors making for legal instability, but legislative evolution too: first the attempt by the ruling class to set themselves above the law’s restrictions and secondly the constant struggle of the ruled to extend their rights and see equal laws for all.” As is often the case, the ruling class is loath to relinquish their position of superiority and to allow for equal laws for all. Civil war is all too often a consequence of this situation and there is as Freud tells us a period when law is in abeyance and force is once more the arbiter, followed by a new regime of law.

The conflict in the North of Ireland was sparked by this struggle for equal rights for Catholics, equal access to housing, to education, to jobs. The taking up of arms, which followed was driven by a desire for a united Ireland. Freud reminds us that the two instincts, eros and the death or destructive instinct are alloyed together. Human affairs are complicated…. several motives of similar composition concur to bring about the act. Idealism and erotic instincts of self- preservation are also charged with the impetus of instincts of hatred and aggressiveness. The discharge of one (facilitates) draws strength from the unleashing of the other. These instincts are alloyed together, inseparable. The ideal of Nationalism permits the unleashing of the death instinct in the service of a just cause. This erotic tie of patriotism or nationalism binds the group together. In Group Psychology Freud explains the libidinal constitution of groups which have a leader. In groups such as this there is a double tie of firstly identification with the other members of the group and secondly the individual gives up his ego ideal and substitutes it for the group ideal as embodied in the leader. Freud gives us the formula of “The object has been put in the place of the ego ideal.”He continuesThis is akin to being in love, when there is a devotion of the ego to the object. “Everything the object does and asks for is right and blameless. Conscience has no application to anything that is done for the sake of the object; in the blindness of love remorselessness is carried to the pitch of a crime.” If this is the nature of the common bonds between men during a conflict in pursuit of the same ideals then conscience is put to one side and must be dealt with later when the war is finally over.

The war in the North lasted thirty years from 1969 until 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. This brought an end to what is known as the Troubles. This period of conflict was largely confined to the six counties of the North. An area with a population of 1.5 million people. During this time 3,500 people died and 47,000 were injured. It is interesting that this civil war is simply referred to as “The Troubles”. Pro rata per population, this level of violence is on a scale comparable with the American Civil War. Naming this conflict “the Troubles” seems to me an attempt to disregard the violence and the nature of the conflict in the North. Use of the term war has a clearer beginning and ending and perhaps an expectation of an international code of conduct, although Freud tells us international rules of war are generally ignored. The troubles meanwhile can be never ending, no clear beginning or ending. Indeed “Troubles” can follow you for life. These are questions of language and language is an unresolved problem for the communities of the North which I will come back to later.

The protracted nature of the violence in the North now makes the restoration of common bonds between neighbours all the more difficult. Freud tells us that war tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of these bonds impossible for a long time to come.

Embitterment is a sentiment that the North is all too familiar with.

In 1998 when The Good Friday agreement was signed a new Northern Ireland executive was established and direct rule from Westminster, which had existed since 1974, ceased. A new power sharing agreement between the parties was re-established. However this new executive struggles to govern. Since 1998 the North has reverted to direct rule several times when the executive cannot agree to work together. Common bonds between neighbours have been almost irrevocably broken. The re-establishment of rule or civilisation is fraught and emotional. During a time of war laws are transgressed, instincts which ran riot and had free reign must now be curtailed and this change in the order of things has consequences.

War brings about in us a different attitude to death.

War strips us of the later accretions of civilization and lays bare the primal man in each of us. Primeval man on the one hand took death seriously, recognised it as the termination of life and on the other hand he also denied death and reduced it to nothing. He took up radically different attitudes towards the death of other people, strangers or enemies than towards his own. He had no objection to someone else’s death. “for strangers and enemies we do acknowledge death and consign them to it quite as readily and unhesitatingly as primeval man.” In our unconscious impulses we daily get rid of anyone who stands in our way, anyone who has offended or injured us.”

But the death of someone close to him was different. Through the experience of the death of someone close to him he understood he too would die. But on the other hand these deaths pleased him too, since in each of the loved persons there was also something of the stranger. The death or risk of death of someone we love, mother, father, brother, sister, child becomes very real in a war and our two opposing attitudes towards death collide, the one which acknowledges it as the annihilation of life and the other which denies it as unreal. These two opposing attitudes come into conflict. These loved ones are on the one hand an inner possession, components of or own ego, but on the other hand they are partly strangers even enemies. Their death fulfils a wished for fantasy. The symptom expresses an awareness of these past transgressions which have been wished for and come to pass in reality. When such wishful thinking and the reality of a death of a loved relative, caused by war coincide this must generate a sense of guilt. A sense of guilt which is communicated from one generation to the next. It is noteworthy that rates of mental illness in Northern Ireland have been found to be higher than expected. I have some figures and statistics to illustrate my point.

• In 2013 Bunting and colleagues published a paper in the journal of psychiatric epidemiology reporting on the prevalence of mental health disorders across Northern Ireland. They found the rates of illness to be 25% higher than similar UK populations, populations with similar levels of deprivation. Poor mental health is seen in populations with greater levels of deprivation but the authors cite the added factor of the legacy of Troubles contributing to these high levels of illness.

• Suicide rates also appear to be higher than expected. Around the late 1990s there were many reports of very high suicide rates, However issues with the statistical collection and collation process in NI make these past comparisons unreliable. Revised data indicates that suicide rates in NI are still notably higher than neighbouring countries. Rates in England & Wales 10.5 suicides per 100,000 population, the Republic of Ireland 9.2 per 100.000 population and in NI was 14.3 suicides per 100,000 population.

• In 2014 a US data journalist John McClure, published a report which highlighted astonishing rates of antidepressant prescription and high rates of prescription of sedatives, pain killers and anti-anxiety medications. In 2014 antidepressant prescription rates in Northern Ireland far exceeded those of England and Wales and were also higher than levels found in 23 countries featured in a global study which included Canada, Australia, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden. These prescription levels are higher than other UK regions with a similar economic profile or with similar or higher rates of depression.

• What stands out in all of these figures is the higher prevalence of anxiety and depression in young people. The Youth Wellbeing Prevalence Survey found that one

in eight (12.6%) young people met the criteria for anxiety and depression in NI compared with rates in England at one in twelve (8.2%). These rates are among the highest in Europe and are in young people aged 11 to 19 years who were born after the peace agreement of 1998.

• At odds with all of this is the finding that the rate of self harm is lower than elsewhere in UK/Ireland as reported in a study by O’Connor et al in 2014. The authors of this report discuss this unexpected finding in the context of higher rates of hospital treated self-harm in the North compared to elsewhere and rising suicide rates in the region and the already mentioned high rates of mental disorder in the North. The most likely explanation is that respondents to the anonymous self-report survey are more reluctant to disclose personal sensitive information. This finding may be reflective of the “whatever you say, say nothing approach” which is evident in societies during a conflict.

So what are these facts and figures telling us?

The aggressiveness of the death instinct which was allowed free reign during war must be curtailed in civilization. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud tells us that Man’s aggressiveness is introjected, internalized, sent back to where it came from- that is directed towards his own ego. There it is taken over by a portion of the ego which sets itself over against the rest of the ego as super ego, and which now in the form of conscience is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super ego and the ego that is subjected to it is the sense of guilt. So the aggression which was displayed outwardly is now controlled inwardly and directed against the ego. It is a paradoxical relationship.

A considerable amount of aggressiveness is developed by the child against the authority which prevents him from having his first satisfactions, (his father). He is obliged to renounce the satisfaction of his revengeful aggressiveness. He finds his way out of this situation by identification with the unattackable authority. He takes this authority into himself as his superego. This superego now has possession of all the aggressiveness which a child would like to have exercised against it. The relationship between ego and superego is a return, distorted by a wish, of the real relationships between the ego, as yet undivided and an external object. The original severity of the super-ego does not represent the severity which one has experienced from it, or which one attributes to it, it represents ones own aggressiveness towards it. The superego has two sources of aggression, one is from the putative aggression of the external authority and the other is one’s own aggressive energy which has not been used and which one now directs against the inhibiting authority. Freud tells us that both innate constitutional factors and influences from the real environment act in combination” in the formation of the super-ego and the emergence of a conscience.

What are these influences from the real environment and what is the influence of the community super-ego which Freud also refers to in the final chapter of Civilization and its Discontents? The community super-ego, which is based on the impression left behind by the personalities of great leaders. “The community super-ego sets up strict ideal commands, disobedience to which is visited with “fear of conscience.” This cultural super ego is severe in its commands and prohibitions and it assumes that man’s ego is psychologically capable of anything that is required of it.” Lacan describes the super-ego in an even more formidable way. He says the “law of the super-ego has a senseless blind character of pure imperativeness and simple tyranny. “ It is located within the symbolic plane of speech.”

Difficulties with language are apparent, particularly in Belfast. There is a running battle in the North about bilingual signage. Just one example is in west Belfast an area of strong republican support, where there is a demand to change the name completely from one with colonial trappings to one with Irish meaning like Cois Cluana in Anderstown. Opponents protest most people prefer the old name and visitors can’t find where they are going. In some instances the council has resorted to the nationalist end of a street having bilingual signage and English only at the unionist end of the street. This is probably an example of a subversion of the law by the harsh super-ego. Lacan says the super-ego is at one and the same time the law and its destruction.

This imperative of the super-ego is apparent at this level of the local council but the superego also appears to be exercising an internal harshness for individuals who are presenting with symptoms of self-harm, depression and inflated suicide rates and resorting to a heavy reliance on medication to deal with their malaise. Furthermore these symptoms seem to be all the more prominent among young people aged 11 to 19 all of whom were born after the Troubles had ended, during a time of peace. These children have difficulties with poverty and deprivation, but they seem more vulnerable to suicide an depression than their peers elsewhere because of what is referred to in the literature as the “legacy of the troubles”. This is the fierceness of the harsh super-ego imposing the will of the Grand Autre to the detriment of the subject. These symptoms are the consequences of a super-ego operating without the moderating effect of an ego ideal.

The possibility of reaching an ego-ideal shared by both communities seems a long time away while they are still at the level of disagreeing about what the street they live on is to be called.

References

Bunting et al (2013) Prevalence and Treatment of 12-month DSM-IV Disorders in the Northern Ireland study of health and stress. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. Jan;48(1) 81-93.

Bunting et al (2022) Prevalence and risk factors of mood and anxiety disorders in children and young people: Findings from the Northern Ireland Youth Wellbeing Survey. Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry May 18;27(3):686-700.

Freud, S. (1930) Vol XXI Civilization and its Discontents

Freud, S. (1933) Why War? A Correspondence Between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.

O’Connor et al (2014) Adolescent self-harm: a school-based study in Northern Ireland. J Affect Disord. Apr;159:46-52.

McClure J. (2014) “The Script Report” The Detail 17 November 2014