Freud Generalized

Freud Generalized

Freud’s psychoanalytic system was built around the idea of sexual repression. Sexual taboos expressed as societal pressures lead to the repression of the sexual instinct, resulting in distinctive psychological consequences. These include: neurosis, sexually charged dreams, dirty jokes, the artistic drive, and a general feeling of malaise. The basic mechanism is the repressive act applied to sexual desires. This leads to sublimation and symbolic release. The libido is distorted and thwarted, affecting mental health. So the story goes. The question I want to ask is whether this theory can be applied to other sorts of instinctive desire—specifically, the desire for food. As things stand, there is not much of a taboo about eating: we can eat what we like when we like with no shame attaching. There are exceptions such as dietary prohibitions of various sorts: kosher food, not eating cows, not eating meat in a vegetarian household. But they are not extreme enough to match the kind of sexual repression Freud was talking about, so I will need to invent a thought experiment. This is not difficult: picture a civilization that enforces many kinds of food prohibition, with shame and punishment as deterrents to indulging one’s natural food preferences. Suppose hot food is prohibited, perhaps for religious reasons, along with apples, oranges, and bananas. No butter on bread, nothing spicy. People desire these things, but it is deemed sinful to even think about them or talk about them. Children are brought up to feel shame about such desires and are punished for indulging them (buttered bread is deemed particularly heinous, the sign of a corrupt soul). Religion gets in on the act, predicting hell for violators. It’s a heavy trip, man. Meanwhile, we can suppose, sex gets a free pass: here you can do whatever you want—promiscuity, masturbation, even a bit of incest. Anything goes—you are actually admired for your sexual “impurity”. There is no sexual repression at all. According to Freudian theory, none of the consequences of sexual repression will apply in this society: no sexual neurosis, no sex dreams, no dirty jokes, no artistic sublimation, lots of erotic happiness. However, again according to Freud, food consumption will be surrounded by the untoward effects of repression, because repression attempts to control instincts that strive for free expression. You badly want butter on your bread, or some hot soup, but your society abhors such culinary sins—you were spanked as a child for breaking these rules and would be despised as an adult if you succumbed to said desires. Consequently, you are a food neurotic, plagued by food dreams, are always telling “dirty” food jokes, and feel pretty lousy in the eating department (all that not getting to eat what you want to eat). You have a seething food unconscious, pressing for release. The basic psychological law that Freud discovered (allegedly) is that repression necessarily leads to such symptoms of self-denial. Desire seeks release (hydraulicly so) and any attempt to thwart it spills over into untoward psychic perturbations. That is just the way the human mind works: it is a psychological law that repressed desire produces the kinds of effects noted. So, repressing food desires will produce the same kinds of effects as repressing sexual desires, should it occur. It doesn’t occur much with us, but it could occur in a possible society; in this society there will be a need for psychotherapists to work on people’s repressed culinary desires. And the same mechanism will work on any natural desire that is thwarted and repressed—even the desire to pursue one’s scholarly interests in peace. You might be publicly shamed for working on the mind-body problem, for example (so you only do it in your dreams in a disguised form). Freud’s theory is not limited to sex but applies to any kind of desire that receives the taboo-repression treatment. How could it not?

How should we respond to this point? One response would be to say, “How interesting, Freud’s theory could apply to the case of food, with no loss of plausibility!” It was only contingently about sex, despite appearances. On another planet, it might be about food, or even scholarly interests. A second response would be to say that there must be a difference between the food case and the sex case, because it doesn’t sound right to extend it to the case of food. How could food lead to such drastic psychic deformations? Wouldn’t food prohibitions just lead to a lot of conscious discontent, not the formation of a culinary unconscious with its attendant psychological ramifications? So, there has to be a difference between the two cases—there has to be something special about sex. Is sex perhaps the stronger desire, the more pressing? (Try telling that to someone who has been fasting for three days). Thirdly, it might be concluded that Freud’s theory has to be wrong about sex precisely because it is clearly wrong about food. The cases are exactly parallel, but surely the Freudian consequences would not obtain in the food case—just a lot of griping and rule violation and black-marketing. I incline to this third view, but we don’t have any solid empirical data, so I must remain agnostic, as a good scientist. Still, I am morally certain culinary Freudianism stands no chance of being true, but ought to be true if Freud were right about sex. That’s not how the mind works.[1]

[1] It might be said that there is a deep difference between the food case and the sex case, namely that sex is inherently shameful while eating is not. Sex should be repressed, but not so eating. Extreme puritans would contend as much. Thus, sexual desire is necessarilyapt for repression, even without societal pressures. We need to suppress our sexual desires or they will devour us, wrecking civilization. The conscious mind cannot bear the weight and fire of human eros, so the formation of a repressed sexual unconscious is entirely natural. That is not a Freudian view, nor the current opinion on such matters; but if there exists a deep acceptance of it in the human psyche (whether true or false), that would explain our asymmetrical attitudes towards sex and food. For it does seem odd that we are so ready to believe the Freudian story about sex but smile at the idea of a food unconscious, or a scholarly unconscious. Sex seemsspecial, but exactly why is unclear. Is there something intrinsically evil about sex, but not about food? Does violence, say, lurk at its heart, or contempt, or competition?