Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek’s Differing Approaches to Psychoanalysis

“Peterson and Žižek, perhaps the best-known public intellectuals of the Right and Left respectively—are exponents of psychoanalysis: Peterson of its Jungian variety, and Žižek of its Lacanian one.”

Introduction

“The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life  has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them. Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a meaning stands and falls with the religious system, will  therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what themselves show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavor has two sides, a positive and a negative aim.” – Sigmund Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents

In the late 19th century, the Viennese thinker Sigmund Freud revolutionized the world when he claimed that the conscious mind was just one small part of who we were. Buried beneath the to and fro of our waking thoughts was the vast, undiscovered country of the unconscious mind. It was from here that our desires emerged—often presented to us in coded or distorted form and subject to repression and censorship when we were unable to deal with what we truly wanted. For Freud, much of this was framed in sexual terms, which scandalized his haughty middle-class clientele. The Oedipus Complex, penis-envy, and an emphasis on childhood sexuality are all contributions—or, if you prefer, falsifications—made by psychoanalysis to our understanding of the human mind. But beyond these well-known and oft-mocked descriptions, Freud put forward compelling ideas about the relationship between human beings and civilization.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud analyzed the tense relationship that always exists between the individual and society. On the one hand, society is necessary to privilege collective desires over individual ones—just look at the depression which has arisen from Coronavirus isolation—and to provide security. On this reading, Freud seems to be offering a conservative defense of society, focusing on order, stability, and the economic boon of cooperation. On the other hand, there was a darker side to this. Freud pointed out that society imposes serious social pressures on the individual that compels the super-ego, that part of the unconscious responsible for demanding repression. (Society nudges us to repress those desires that it deems we ought not have.) This means society is—in many respects—the ultimate source of unhappiness for human beings. This is a thesis that would seem to lead to the radical conclusion that society needs to be either overthrown or reformed. While Freud himself tried to chart a middle course between these extremes, his many followers in the years that followed were more inclined to gravitate to one extreme or the other, making it sensible to talk about a left and right wing psychoanalysis.