“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
– British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey
One of the first ideas that came to mind when reading William Jame’s writings was something rather unexpected. I was reminded of the last two lines of the poem Invictus: “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” Both of those works resonated to me as excellent symbols of Western society in the years before the First World War. An Europe deeply rooted in the revolution that was the Enlightenment, a Europe that believed that God was dead and that humanity, finally free from the shackles of religion and tradition, would rise to take its place at the helm of the world. It was an optimistic, idealistic, even naive Europe that shattered on the bloody battlefields of the Great War and would remerge an utterly different entity four years later.
William Jame’s descriptions of perception struck me as such. Yes, he did state that perception itself was subjective and that we would all perceive objects in a different manner, but then nowhere did he question the infallibility of our judgement. Whereas Freud believed our actions were controlled by an undercurrent of human emotions called the subconscious, James believed that we were all utterly in control of our each and every action*.
It is also interesting to note that the theory of stream of consciousness, which is irreversible and linear progressing, shares certain similarities with the Enlightenment’s theory of history. While pre-modernist history tended to be cyclical in nature, modernist thinkers tended to think of it in a linear fashion and post-modernist thinkers found that still too simplistic and shifted towards a web like format.
The Europe that emerged from the First World War was nothing similar to the Europe that entered it. Four years of brutal warfare had left Europe jaded, bleak and cynical. Not only was this apparent in the political field where international relations took a realist turn, but also in visual art. Gone was the colourful impressionist art of the pre-war period to be replaced by the brutally honest surrealist movement that sought to strip the romantic facade around humanity to reveal its inner nature. If Monet’s Water Lilies was the representation of the beauty of pre-war Europe, than Edvard Munch’s The Scream would represent what it had become. And indeed, such a turn took place in psychology as well. No longer are humans immaculate and perfect, they are brutish animals. This was reflected in Freud’s works in the form of the pleasure principle where the Victorian tradition of stoicism, of mind over body, is replaced by Freud’s theory of a repressed animalistic state kept in containment by social institutions.
In a way, I suppose that I find myself more in line with Hegelian thinking. Sadly that also means that my personal viewpoint on James v Freud is rather simplistic; it is only through a synthesis of the two that we can begin to better understand the human psyche. Jame’s thinking is a bit simplistic in a certain sense, though through no fault of his own as he was one of the first in his field, and focuses a tad bit too much on the individualistic aspect thought and not the effects that society has upon the individual. On the other hand I suppose is should be noted that Freud’s On the pleasure principle wasn’t extremely well received even by his followers who regarded the text as a bit ambiguous and confusing.
Of course, I myself also find myself to be biased to a certain extent. This clear distinction between a pre-War and post-War Europe reeks a bit of meta-narratives. The colonial powers of Western Europe, the British Empire and French Republic, remained power world powers until the end of the Second World War while the idea of “empire” remains deeply ingrained within the British mindset till this very day, which I’d even attribute for the Falkland wars in the 70’s (I’m fairly certain that a couple of islands with sheep on them isn’t necessary for sending a carrier task force to retake).
*Note. Since I’ve not extremely well read on both Freud and James, I sincerely apologise for any misinterpretations of the works of either author.