our egos

The Growth of the Fragile Ego

A Muslim techie is murdered in Pune because some idiot posted anonymously on Facebook an insult to Shivaji, who died more than 333 years ago. A few years ago a Dutch filmmaker had his throat cut in broad daylight in Amsterdam for making an ill-judged film on Islam. Women are raped, and then murdered in India. Men randomly shoot people in schools and malls in America. Rage abounds in the world. Publishers withdraw books which could presumably hurt someone’s sentiments. Artists cannot show artwork for a similar fear. A Tamil mathematician even objected vociferously because an American play portrayed Ramanujan being kissed on the brow by a goddess in a dream!

These are politically unconnected events, but display a deep psychological malaise of epidemic proportions in modern societies. The existence of neurosis, and even of psychosis, have always been part of the human condition, and recent researches show that even the great apes could under some circumstances display such effects in their behaviour. But what is new is the regular manifestation of highly neurotic socio-pathology affecting groups at a time, and militantly asserted as justifiable behaviour. Better laws or more policing cannot alone cope with such phenomena. Better educational methods from the early years onwards, which attempt to mould humanistic attitudes in children, could help, but these should be based on a deeper understanding of psychological processes at play.

Sigmund Freud and his disciples developed the science of psychoanalysis in the early part of the last century to bring to light the power of the unconscious, long suppressed and denied under the puritanical value system of the Victorian age. Even the views of Indian social reformers were moulded by such imported values of the English. The sexual instinct came to be considered as something ‘dirty,’ the devadasis were seen as nothing better than prostitutes, and even the sari came to be worn differently to hide female legs.

Freud and Jung’s quest was to understand the origin of psychotic manifestations in their time as repercussions of the suppression of the unconscious, the denial of the sexual impulse, and fear of it. There was also recognition that the human psyche saddled with a dominant ego led to the production of socio-pathologies like militarism and war.

What is happening today on a universal scale is somewhat different.  The rapid process of modernization and deepening of capitalism throughout the world has left many men without skills or possibilities to provide for their families. Very early on they realise that they face a threatening uncertain future. Traditional social values are challenged by new liberal values and new sexual mores of the West, propagated ‘in their face’ by media. The ego is almost drowned by the uncontrollable tides of the unconscious. In desperation, many such men are reaching out to archetypical images to tie their egos to, for certainty, for control over their lives and to salvage some self-respect. The archetype could be a perfect God like Rama, a historical hero like Shivaji, or even  newly created cinematic heroes like Rajnikant or Amitabh Bachchan, or even a character like Rambo, killing to save his American ‘way of life.’ Their egos, their souls, are firmly linked to the imagined perfectness of such archetypes. Any imagined insult to the image has to be punished, exorcised physically by violent demonstration, openly in social groups, to re-validate their own existence. Intellectual liberal attitudes and discussion would still leave their egos sinking in desperate un-understood internal conflicts. The daily rape and murder sequence reported in India is another horrible feature of this loss of self. The act denigrates women as the source of ‘dirty’ sexual attraction, and the murder is a denial of yielding to it.

Modern societies have come a long way towards restoring the status of women by changing laws and removing hurdles in the workplace. However, the process of change must also necessarily focus on men and their attitudes, through open and educative discussions with their social and religious leaders. The meaning of the ancient religious practice that located sexuality in creative spirituality and sanctified marriage has to be re-visioned. Economic processes cannot be allowed callously to junk unskilled men, and present-day governance requires the recognition that the self-worth of persons is damaged only at great peril to all nations.