Impact of WWI on Society: Freud, Jung, Einstein
The Impact of World War I on Society and Thought
The First World War left Britain in a disillusioned and cynical mood, with an increasing feeling of rootlessness and frustration due to the slow dissolution of the Empire into the Commonwealth. Writers like George Orwell warned their readers against totalitarianism. Nothing seemed to be right or certain. Scientists destroyed the old views of man and the universe, and new views that had emerged at the beginning of the century spread through society.
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
The first set of new ideas had been introduced by Sigmund Freud in his essay, The Interpretation of Dreams. He emphasized the power of the unconscious to affect behavior, highlighting that man’s actions could be motivated by irrational forces. He placed enormous importance on the Oedipus phase. The effects in the sphere of family life were deep, altering the relationship between parents and children. The Freudian concept of infantile sexuality focused attention on the importance of early development. He also provided a new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of “free association.”
Freud believed that our personality develops through interaction between the three main parts of the human mind: the id, the ego, and the superego.
- The id is the most primitive part, containing all our personality’s components and operating unconsciously.
- The ego is the rational part, representing reason and common sense. Freud used the word “ego” to mean a set of psychic functions.
- The superego is concerned with social rules and morals, covering what many would refer to as “conscience.” It consists of two systems:
- The conscience, which can punish the ego by making it feel guilty.
- The ideal self, which creates an imaginary picture of how you ought to be and deals with ambition and social behavior, including how to treat others and how to be a useful member of society.
According to Freud, the id, the ego, and the superego are in constant conflict.
Jung’s Collective Unconscious
Carl Gustave Jung continued Freud’s studies and added the concept of the “collective unconscious,” a sort of cultural memory containing the universal images and beliefs of the human race. Some figures of the everyday world had great symbolic power.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity discarded the concepts of time and space, which he saw as subjective dimensions. The worldview lost its solidity, and the scientific revolution was complemented by verbal experimentation.
Bergson’s Concept of Time
Henri Bergson made a distinction between historical time and psychological time. Historical time is external, linear, and measured in terms of the spatial distance traveled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock, while psychological time is internal and measured by the relative emotional intensity.
Relativism and the Crisis of Identity
Numerous studies of anthropology helped undermine the absolute truth of religious and ethical systems in favor of more relativist standpoints. The problem that lay behind all these manifestations of uncertainty was the inability to arrive at a commonly accepted picture of man. To Freud, man was a part of nature, a biological and psychological phenomenon. To Marx, he was the outcome of social and economic forces. Nietzsche stated that the Christian notion of man, as owing his possibilities of salvation to God’s grace, had lost its former strength.