The Return of the Repressed:

Sometimes, in the practice of psychoanalysis, analysts face a sudden resurgence of some old symptoms or psychical conditions that have no clear link with what is going on in the ongoing analysis. This is usually a return of repressed material that did not have been worked out or worked through by the patient and was just severed from the rest of his active psychical life. This phenomenon is usually common in the revival of old phobia, ticks, or unverbalized sates of the mind. It also could become a distracting mechanism from continuing the ongoing psychoanalysis. Rightly, those unexpected changes in the course of an analysis are called a return of the repressed, because they come back in the state that they were previously repressed. Something similar could sometimes happens in a society. A social phenomenon that is not given the full chance to materialize, comes back with venom and gets actualized…a social ‘return of the repressed’. WWII is a good example of a return of the incomplete resolution of the social pressures in Europe that caused WWI (dispelling the local empires).     

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The reaction to the events of the last few weeks in the USA regarding police treatment of blacks is still quite alive and keeps going on. It proves that it is something more than just a reactive upset. However, there are some features in the continuation of criticizing and condemning police brutality that makes one worries. It looks like the unified stand of the Americans is going either nowhere (back to the legislative corridors), or to the waste basket of the partially understood. Whatever is concluded about the white race reaction or the black race reaction does not answer two questions: does the latest events of police brutality toward blacks suggest a new trend or it is just a coincidence that a few things happened in a short span of time stirring up a sudden flare up? The demonstrations that happened lately and engulphed the whole of the USA and many other societies and nationalities in the world were made, in most cases, of more whites than blacks. The question is: are those demonstrations manifesting a change in the white population or in the black or both? If for convenience we will say it is a change in both races we will be missing that each race has to change something different from the other, i.e., the answer is not simply ‘in both’.

The answer to the first question is that what is happening lately is not local; it is universal, and is not limited just to police brutality in the USA but about social inequalities wherever it existed in the world. Brits in Trafalgar Square were seeing what happened in the USA in regard to that killed black guy as the American version of their version of social segregations and inequalities (which Irked million who voted to stay in the EU). The late change is universal and not limited to abuse of power by the police but related to the abuse, neglect, and the failure of the current systems of governing in the world in regard to the pressing demands of the majorities everywhere.  It is a new view of globalization.

The answer to the second question is that the change that is taking over the world lately is a global change; universal, even with its specificity in certain aspects is still of interconnected issues not just commonalities and parallelisms. The change affects the whole human races directly and indirectly. However, each race or ethnic group seems to contribute to that change in its own social and international condition.

The change in the blacks of the USA is turning the previously shy request for equality into demanding corrections in the circumstances of persecution that go back few hundreds of years.  Blacks are changing their sense of helplessness into a sense of entitlement. Whites, individually, without any doubt in my mind, are fair, law loving and abiding by nature, and quite honest, which is not at all the picture they give as a race or a distinct ethnic entity. Therefore, they seem lately (few decades) to be changing their sense of refinement, goodness and morality into some tangible, actual, and credible things to show that they too are joining the ‘other’ races in changing. Whites have to change their sense of entitlement into a sense of deserving and convince blacks of that. In other terms, despite the different forms of inequalities and consequently in the demands for change, the human races are reacting collectively and reciprocally to the crisis of late. If we do not accept that there are new relationships developing between the conflicting adversaries in the world, we will stand helpless in front of the returning of the repressed between those ethnicities (in India, Myanmar, North China, etc.). The best we could do, without identifying the changes in the old antagonisms, is to come to a partial understanding of the present ‘historical’ moment.

The conflicting adversaries of the past are able now to verbalise their own needs and aspirations better, thus, are becoming more amenable to accepingt solutions.

The WWII and Dissipation of Illusions:

The present sudden and great change in in racial interactions is a return of a significant repressed period of time in recent history.  After WWII there was a great movement of rebelling against foreign occupations in the colonies and the empires. The cry was loud for the liberation of the oppressed and the enslaved everywhere, breaking up the empires and creating new independent countries and nations. This movement was supported by European thinkers and was reflected in the democratic elections in Europe and European style elections everywhere. This  gave the conservative blocks ‘bleeding noses’. This movement was initiated and supported by the leftists in both the liberated countries and in the previously dominating countries. The end of the WWII came with the hope to end the old world of colonization and slavery too. Yet, soon after the “end of the war” the two previous allies against fascism, Western Europe and the Soviet Union, became the new version of the human races’, as if the compulsive need for an enemy to feel secure and superior (paradox!!) was stronger than any hope for peace. The glorious movement of liberation, abolition of exploiting the defeated, equalities, democracy, and ‘racelessness’ was ‘repressed’ very quickly and very cruelly. Repressing the budding aspirations was done by both main powers and with the same paradoxical BS. In the West it was to fight the dictatorial communist system. This was done by creating dictatorships all over the newly won parts of the world (even old democracies). In the East the communist regimes oppressed its people to ‘protect it from the false ideologies of the capitalists and colonialists. 

Those historical details are likely of little interest to most but I mention them to highlight that for some, going around facts is a way of blocking change and  and any area of progress. This phenomenon shows something intrinsic in the return of the repressed. After WWII, repression of the glorious movement of social justice used paradoxical logic as the means to impose repression: set up dictatorships to ward off the threatening dictatorships of the enemy. Giving the communist parties the authority to decide what is anti-fascism was fascistic in itself. The present uprise in response to racial discrimination is threatened by anti-white racism-ironically- initiated by somewhites in different contexts.      

The New and Present is the Return of the Old Repressed. 

Avoiding facts to avoid the necessities of change resulted in creating in Europe four identities that replace the old racial identities. The world is now made up of Europe, China, Russia the USA. Somehow, or naturally, racial discrimination came back from repression in slightly different intensities in those four universal entities. The most entity that has problems with the new era is the united states. Europe has some problems with the immigrating Africans (previously slaves and then the responsibility of the occupiers). China has ‘some’ problems with parts of it that were detached from it by the European and she disclaiming them now as part of it.

The communist party in Russia was smart when it did not stand against the emancipation of the satellite Soviets and is satisfied by being the old nation and country of Russia. The problem is with USA.

The Americans are struggling (sometimes painfully) with their new identity or place in the world. After the victory of the WWII the USA was the only country that came out of it as the “greatest”, the “strongest” ….etc., Gradually the rest of the world recovered from its stupidity and the three other entities caught up and became equal to the USA and surpassed it in certain eras. The struggle to maintain the status of the leader of the world was clearly failed. American Blacks caught up with the whites in many aspects and excelled in some others.

The three changes seem to have happened in the USA lately in regard to racial discrimination:

Blacks have taken good care of themselves and proved that they are as capable and qualified as any other race. Proportionately, they seem to have caught up with the whites in the number of distinguished citizens (the most competent president in the last fifty years! was black).

 More whites have accepted the fact that blacks have proven without doubt their equality to other races. History to them has become more pain and shame than pride and prejudice.

A social gap opened between the whites in the North and industrialised America and the South.

The repressed of the north got integrated with the worked-out sentiments about Our America, while the repressed returned (in desperation) as is in the south and some other pickets of old pride. I can see many white Americans would not accept my view of the return of the repressed in the south of the USA. I would remind them of Donald trump: he is supposed bring back the greatness of the USA. Let us also think of the police in south that after murdering a black citizen and the uprise in the country as a reaction that murder go back and does the same thing twice within a week with two new blacks.