
A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive - axiomdata316
https://www.bookforum.com/print/2703/a-psychoanalytic-reading-of-social-media-and-the-death-drive-24171
======
082349872349872
> "online celebrity is only ever 240 characters away from online infamy"

Horace, about 2'000 years ago, suggests a (long to modern eyes) embargo[1]:

> "You will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a
> word once sent abroad can never return."

cautions against seeking internet points from astroturfers[2]:

> "As those who mourn at funerals for pay, do and say more than those that are
> afflicted from their hearts; so the sham admirer is more moved than he that
> praises with sincerity."

and even agrees with TFA's psychoanalytic reading[3]:

> "And whomsoever [a mad poet] seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with
> recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till satiated with blood."

[1]
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D347)

[2]
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D419)

[3]
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D453)
Amusingly, footnote 3 in the perseus text is a rosetta stone for the scholar's
leisurely manner of saying "like and subscribe": "I must beg to recommend to
the reader's notice my translation of Aristotle's _Poetics_ , with a
collection of notes, as the two treatises contribute to each other's
illustration in the fullest extent."

Bonus tube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKftOH54iNU)

~~~
Real_S
From [3]

>I shall wonder if with his wealth he can distinguish a true friend from a
false one

The state of social media?!

A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need.

~~~
trhway
>A thousand "followers" but none that can be called on in times of need.

in the attention economy the followers aren't friends, they are consumers.

------
discreteevent
"That we want to waste our time. That, however much we might complain, we find
satisfaction in endless, circular argument."

"But political and economic and immunological crises pile on one another in
succession, over the background roar of ecological collapse. Time is not
infinite. None of us can afford to spend what is left of it dallying with the
stupid and bland."

But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our downtime
shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland people just
like ourselves (there's not many geniuses in any particular locality, and they
usually aren't the ones shooting the shit, just as they don't now). At least
it was face to face, I suppose. And at least you could go home and leave them
behind to watch tv!

Edit: I will admit that there was more time to think and daydream (and be
bored) then. Probably because you didn't have a tv in your pocket and, even if
you did, there was often really nothing to watch.

~~~
coldtea
> _But in the past we had plenty of crises and yet we used to spend our
> downtime shooting the shit, going around in circles, with stupid and bland
> people just like ourselve_

Past people were much more involved in societal change and day to day history
than we are.

~~~
enkid
You can't make a broad statement like that. In most places, for most times,
people have been pretty passive. The mass of people being involved is the
exception, not the rule, and even then, it normally was not a majority, but a
local minority that acted at the right time that changed things.

~~~
411111111111111
I think both statements can be true. It's just when there are only two hundred
people around, each voice has more influence then even an enthusiastic
politician nowadays.

So just by living like we do today with having opinions and voicing them
you've already influenced your society back then. If you do the same today,
nothing would've changed.

~~~
enkid
But that's comparing apples to oranges. You're defining society "nowadays" as
being hundreds of millions of people, and society "back then" as having only
two hundred people. That's like complaining that people are more involved in
their family and their workplace than they are with people across the country.
It's absurd.

I also can't think of a time period or large geographic area that's had
writing being common and most people were constrained to a society of 200
people, unless they were purposefully insular.

~~~
411111111111111
while you're once again correct that i'm comparing oranges to apples, my point
nonetheless stands. the world population before the industrialization was in
the lower hundreds of thousands.

the usual town did house significantly less then a thousand people. compared
to a usual town of today with >40k inhabitants.

~~~
Pirgo
World population by early 19th century was already 1 billion, what are you
talking about?

~~~
411111111111111
yes, it was.

the first industrialization started in the middle 18th century though, so not
sure what your point is.

~~~
coldtea
Probably that already in the "middle 18th century" it was close to a billion
people (and in any case, many more than low thousands: hundreds of millions).

Heck, ancient Athens alone (a single Greek city) had a population in the "low
thousands" in 500 B.C.

------
tremon
_And correct: the telos of the clickbait economy is fascist kitsch_

I'm not sure how to parse this. What does it mean for something to have kitsch
as its ultimate aim, or for an economy to have an aim?

I think I understand what the author is getting at, which is that exciting the
lizard brain in humans is easy to do by creating artificial fears and enemies,
and that it takes very little effort to construct this "art". But "telos"
specifically doesn't mean "a means", it means "purposeful aim". And I don't
think kitsch is the aim. If anything, the aim of the clickbait economy seems
to simply be to displace all other economies, which is a rather trite
statement in itself.

On the other hand, maybe the author was simply looking for a high-brow synonym
for "product" and missed the mark? It's like saying "the telos of the pottery
industry is kitchenware". No it isn't: the telos of the industry is to safely
store long-term goods.

~~~
dredmorbius
Kitsch and fascism have been linked for quite some time. Fro Dwight
MacDonald's "A Theory of Mass Culture" (1953):

 _When to this ease of consumption is added kitsch 's ease of production
because of its standardized nature, its prolific growth is easy to understand.
It threatens High Culture by its sheer pervasiveness, its brutal, overwhelming
quantity. The upper classes, who begin by using it to make money from the
crude tastes of the masses and to dominate them politically, end by finding
their own culture attacked and even threatened with destruction by the
instrument they have thoughtlessly employed. (The same irony may be observed
in modern politics, where most swords seem to have two edges; thus Nazism
began as a tool of the big bourgeoisie and the army Junkers but ended by using
them as its tools.)_

[https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...](https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDonald_-
_A_Theory_of_Mass_Culture.pdf)

(The link is stronger than evident in this passage though most of the
connections are more verbose than merits quoting here.)

~~~
082349872349872
> "... whereas High Culture could formerly ignore the mob and seek to please
> only the cognoscenti, it must now compete with Mass Culture or be merged
> into it."

Horace's _Art of Poetry_ implies that in his time (as in Molière's or
Shakespeare's? What about Goethe?) dramatic writers had to consider a wide
audience, including but not limited to: the moralisers (those who are senior
in years), the elite (those with a horse, or a name, or a pile of money), and
the mob (those who buy snacks at the show).

[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D1)

Edit: to what degree is meming, insofar as it is "a spontaneous, autochthonous
expression of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without the
benefit of High Culture, to suit their own needs," a new Folk Art?

------
krrishd
ejected myself from a twitter addiction just a few months ago and this
resonated.

i think people read the “zombie” comparison as metaphor; IME, it’s pretty
literally accurate.

the realization that snapped me out of it cold turkey was that my twitter
“self” —- cultivated outside of my body, for an environment of pure text —-
had accumulated far more status, meaning, friendship, etc than my physical
self possibly could; and why wouldn’t it? the internet has no friction in
comparison.

so that weird external GPT-3-esque “self” quite literally reached primacy
within me, with a huge margin over the original one unlucky enough to be
constrained by physical reality & trained via physical human interaction: and
as a result i was genuinely zombie-like for a while.

perpetually a disoriented visitor to physical reality, to the people actually
around me — only at home in text. and it was probably clear to anyone who knew
me in person well.

maybe annoyingly mystical for HN’s taste, but when this clicked for me, it
felt like discovering i’d been possessed by a demon.

~~~
Viliam1234
yeah, my facebook self also has lots of friends and active social life, I
barely have any.

before I kill him, I wonder whether there are some useful lessons I could
learn from him.

------
quickthrower2
With a name like Max Read there is only one calling!

------
chrisweekly
See also Tristan Harris, and the new Netflix film "The Social Dilemma"

------
Angeo34
I thought it was already established that Freud's teachings were among the
dumbest shit in human history.

If he was Nigerian instead of Central European people would have probably
burned him alive for insanity.

------
Ygg2
Psychoanalytic is as discredited as theory can get. It might as well as
deriving particle theory from of Aristotle four base elements.

Plus the article is riddled with sentences like "telos of the clickbait
economy is fascist kitsch."

It's just empty claptrap, that could have been written in half as many words,
if the writer wasn't trying to be as pretentious.

~~~
hexxiiiz
While I did not find this article particularly deep, psychoanalysis has hardly
been discredited. The core of the theory has been infused into almost every
psychological modality practiced today aside from CBT, and studies have shown
its general efficacy as a practice to be on par with others and in some cases
superior. For the past 20 or so years, the field of neuropsychoanalysis under
Mark Solms et al. has done a lot of good work understanding memory, dreaming,
and higher cognitive processes stemming from Freud's ideas. Nobel Laureat Eric
Kandel wrote in the 90's that psychoanalysis still constitutes the most
intellectually satisfying model of the mind; Kandel has gone on to promote
studying psychoanalytic ideas with modern neuroscientific techniques. Although
several authors have been critical of psychoanalysis, having been criticized
by some does not make an idea instantly discredited. There remains no clear
way to verify a model of higher cognitive processes in the same fashion as a
physics formula.

~~~
Ygg2
> Hardly been discredited.

In 2015, psychoanalyst Bradley Peterson, who is also a child psychiatrist and
director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los
Angeles, said: "I think most people would agree that psychoanalysis as a form
of treatment is on its last legs."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/tell-it-about-
yo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/tell-it-about-your-
mother.html)

Not really singing its praises.

> Nobel Laureat Eric Kandel wrote in the 90's

Sure and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said:

> If you look at all of the complicated ideas that they have developed in an
> infinitesimal amount of time, if you compare to any other of the sciences
> how long it takes to get one idea after the other, if you consider all the
> structures and inventions and complicated things, the ids and the egos, the
> tensions and the forces, and the pushes and the pulls, I tell you they can't
> all be there. It's too much for one brain or a few brains to have cooked up
> in such a short time.

~~~
hexxiiiz
The difference between Kandel and Feynman is that Kandel is a neuroscientist
who understands psychoanalysis and Feynman clearly hadn't really read Freud's
work, only expressing skepticism on the basis of his vague intuitions about
how long it should take to come up with a theory.

~~~
Ygg2
Kandel got Nobel for medicine, namely memory physiological basis of neuron
storage, not for proving psychoanalysis correct. His thoughts on it are as
relevant as Feynman.

A counterexample - Tesla was also a genius Engineer but he also believed in
Aliens, and doves with laser eyes, being infused by Cosmic energy.

~~~
hexxiiiz
Kandel's obvious expertise on the functioning of the brain puts him in
precisely the right position to give an assessment of how realistic Freud's
models in describing what happens in the brain. More specifically, his
expertise on the neurology of memory is directly connected to a lot of what
Freud hypothesized about how memory functions. In fact, in his 99 paper on
psychoanalysis and neuroscience
[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.4....](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.4.505)
Kandel cites specific neuroscientific mechanisms that connect with mechanisms
in the paychoanalytic model. This is very much his area of expertise and far
more relevant than Feynman shooting from the hip about something he does not
really know much about. Kandel is an expert in neuroscience and from the
literature very well versed in psychoanalytic work, and makes actual arguments
salient to both disciplines to justify his opinions, as can be seen in the
above article.

In general, a lot of work has been done in this area, particularly by Solms
[https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra)

Apropos of Tesla, this is far more than the paranoid spiritual fantasies of a
genius struggling with mental illness.

~~~
Ygg2
Ok, but did Kandel proved Freud right? Did he found proof for ego, id, super-
ego, Thanatos/Eros in brain morphology? Me skimming it shows little to no
evidence of so, hence his contributing to prove Freud right is no more
different than what Feynman did.

I did found this gem though:

> Thus, unlike various forms of cognitive therapy and other psychotherapies,
> for which compelling objective evidence now exists—both as therapies in
> their own right and as key adjuncts to pharmacotherapy—there is as yet no
> compelling evidence, outside subjective impressions, that psychoanalysis
> works better than nonanalytically oriented therapy or placebo.

So wait. Even he admits Psychoanalysis is less useful than what we have
currently. Way to bury the lede.

From what I see, this is more a rally to revive psychoanalysis on solid
biological grounds, than confirmation of psycho analysis as such.

~~~
hexxiiiz
The question is not whether Kandel proved anything, but merely whether
psychoanalysis has been discredited. I am not making the case here that it is
proven, verified, or completely substantiated in any particular way (here at
least). That people are still taking its ideas seriously in mainstream
research fields is enough to show that it is not discredited. The whole point
of the aforementioned article is argue that psychoanalysis has credibility as
a theory.

Kandel points out several connections between ideas from Freud's model and
potential neuroscientific correlates. The subsequent works of Solms have
further pursued these connections as a rigorous scientific project. How can
you compare all of this to Feynman arguing against psychoanalysis on the basis
of personally doubting someone could come up with it?

These are not marginal outsiders doing basement research. A theory being
discredited means that there is a consensus in research against it. There is
plenty of active research in reputable institutions both in psychoanalysis and
neuroscience as I linked to explicitly, as well as in therapy research (which
could be surfaced pretty easily). Many may have contested psychoanalysis, but
tis is not what a discredited theory looks like.

~~~
Ygg2
> The question is not whether Kandel proved anything, but merely whether
> psychoanalysis has been discredited. I am not making the case here that it
> is proven, verified, or completely substantiated in any particular way

Well, if it's not proven and verified, if it's not more useful than another
theory, what is the point of it?

As the wise man once said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". Why
stick with theory if its useless?

\-------

Let me demonstrate - Geocentric system is correct. From POV fixed to Earth
it's correct to say Earth is center of rotation. So they nailed the
particulars. Sun and the rest of the stars/galaxies rotates relative to Earth.

However, here is the kicker. The more you want to study movement of a certain
galaxy, the more cycles and epi-cycles do you need to construct. The
calculations become more and more difficult. In other words - model is
useless. Model with high effort to predictive power is useless.

\-------

Is Freud right on some particulars? Yes. I do believe there is strong evidence
of a subconscious and conscious process, and subconscious process being the
foundation for consciousness.

But ID/EGO/SUPER-EGO? No. That probably doesn't exist. Same for his
Eros/Thanatos. Same for his obsession with child sexuality (this was
experimentally disproven). It's just a relic of his flawed theory and
worldview. Why are people trying to resurrect it? No idea.

Instead of building a theory based on evolution, biology, psychology, people
are chasing what some Victorian philosopher said as if it were a gospel.

~~~
hexxiiiz
At the moment, there is no canonically useful model of the mind that is
established in the consensus of those who study it. You are writing this as
though psychoanalysis has been replaced by some better theory that explains
more of the phenomena that it addresses, but no such theory exists. One of its
main contenders, evolutionary psychology, does not actually provide a model
for the mind, just the conditions under which it developed. Other models have
offered piecemeal models of isolated effects such as cognitive dissonance,
many of which are subsumed by psychoanalytic models anyways. The point of
Kandel referring to it as the "most satisfying model of the mind" (at least in
1999) is because it addresses a territory of phenomena that still does not
have a clear alternative. There is no analogous "geocentric system" against
which psychoanalysis looks Ptolemaic. From the above reference to work,
clearly psychoanalytic models are not useless, and hence researchers continue
to find reasons to stick to it.

I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of
particulars. The id/ego/superego is not particularly central to Freud's work
until it makes an appearance as the "second topography" in the 1920's. The
most important part of his model involving unconscious processes are almost
taken for granted by psychology today after trying to soft shoe around the
idea for half a century via reductive behaviorist models that fail to
substantially account for anything complex like language, culture, thought and
memory.

Even if we address the second topography, why is it that it "probably doesn't
exist?". Is it because Feynman doubted it? It would certainly be dogmatic to
suppose that this suffices to justify this claim. Solms et al. have done a lot
of work showing correlates between the model of the ego and the id and
functional neuroscience, so there is work to show that they very well may
exist. You cannot just assert that these things don't exist because you or
Feynman don't personally buy into them. None of these researchers are taking
Freud as gospel, as you seem to be taking the words of Feynman. Denying that
psychoanalysis is useful means engaging in those actually working on its
ideas, or even engaging in Freud's ideas substantially, and making clear
arguments for why this should be treated as useless.

~~~
Ygg2
> At the moment, there is no canonically useful model of the mind that is
> established in the consensus of those who study it.

I'd personally go with either one that shown promise, i.e. can be used to cure
people and can make testable predictions. I know it's hard, this is
psychology. I think a lot of theories that shown promise are computational
theories of mind.

> I think you are conflating Freud's model of the mind with a couple of
> particulars.

I've never read a book about Freud's model without id/ego/superego or
Oedipus/Elektra complex, etc.

Like, ok. He hit the mark with conscious/unconscious. What else?

> why is it that it "probably doesn't exist?" Is it because Feynman doubted
> it?

Because I'm neither a psychologist nor a fortune teller. I'm not aware of any
modern theory really propagating id/superego/ego as some form of structure of
the mind (I could be wrong here), nor am I able to say that in future we won't
discover exactly three precise parts of the mind.

So no. It's not about Feynman. It's about how Freud came with his theory of
the mind and the "evidence" for it.

First. He didn't look at data and then synthesized a solution. He basically
said, yeah, this looks like it, lets make conscious and subconscious. Oh, and
different desires. And different parts of mind. And make them three.

Second. Psychoanalysis is essentially science based on hearsay i.e. therapist
reporting their view on the patient. Yeah, no way that could be biased or
distorted. I'm pretty sure I cured cancer in that one guy. He had symptoms of
common cold, but I definitely cured him of cancer. Yup.

That's not how you do science. Like I know psychology is hard to do, because
it's not like you can debug a person (in clear conscience).

\------

But Feynman is onto something. Frank Wilczek defined a beautiful theory as one
you get more than you put in, or as he put it exuberance of productivity.

In lieu of that, for having all these parts and urges and egos and complexes,
what does psychoanalysis do that other disciplines can't?

~~~
hexxiiiz
Whether one assesses one or another proposed model as having promise is a
matter of debate and not a means to credit or discredit anything. It does not
seem as though there is any case here for the assertion that 'psychoanalysis
has been discredited', as that issue is no longer being debated.

Instead, it seems that the question you are addressing now is whether
psychoanalysis is a promising model. That is a different issue and bears upon
a discussion of the theory itself. If you have never read a book about Freud's
model without id/ego/superego, you don't appear to be familiar with Freud's
work to begin with. Look at everything Freud wrote before 1920, and there is
little mention of these things (the ego shows up some because the term in
German was just "Ich" and is used anywhere a notion of "self" is referenced,
but the "id" and "superego" certainly make no appearance until later).
"Interpretation of Dreams", the "Introductory Lectures", the 19th century
works on "Neurosis", and the metapsychological works primarily address
unconscious processes, memory, repression, and other mechanisms of defense,
with reference to hysteria, obsessional neurosis, paranoia, and psychosis. The
id/ego/superego organization was introduced later in "The Ego and the Id" and
other works around that time.

I would suggest if you are skeptical about Freud, and want to actually
evaluate his ideas, and not cartoons of them, you should at least read "The
Unconscious" or "Interpretation of Dreams", particularly the third part of the
latter text. If you read Freud, you will see that he most certainly looks at
data and syntheses solutions. Freud very clearly and methodically deduces most
of his ideas from accounts of neuroses, dreams, and other mental phenomena. In
the "Interpretation of Dreams" for instance, Freud discusses previous research
on dreams, observes many interesting qualities of recorded dreams as well as
discourse in therapy, "and then synthesized" a model of cognitive mechanisms
that would account for the phenomena, among them condensation, displacement,
and regression. He then goes on to further synthesize a plausible model of how
these processes work in general, how memory and consciousness plays a role in
them, and how these models are consistent with cognition in general. Modern
research on dreams actually substantiates this fairly well thus far, taking
the position that dreams are forms of memory consolidation and the consequence
of "regression".

You really have to read some of this stuff and not just parrot what you have
heard others say about Freud. The "Elektra Complex" is not even Freud's idea;
it was an idea of Jung's that Freud was critical of.

------
ycombinete
I was hoping, from the name, that Book Forum would have a web forum.

------
polishdude20
I liked this :)

------
bvanderveen
If the subject matter interests you, just head straight for Bataille. If
reading is too hard, you can also watch Žižek.

The navel-gazing children of the handset writing about social media in the
21st century are not to be trusted, in my estimation.

