Yes, we recognize that man is a domesticated primate. But how much is he an animal and how does he differ from the same "wild" primates and other biological brothers? We decided to talk about instincts with psychoanalyst Dmitry Olshansky.
What do we call instincts? Physiologists call innate and unconditioned forms of behavior instincts. That is, speaking of instincts, we automatically slide into the discussion of behavior, leaving out the person's personality. And the question of the soul and the unconscious in general remains for us sealed with seven seals.
But doesn't a person have instincts? And the unconscious is not a cauldron of seething passions and impulses associated with sex and aggression? Of course not. The concept of "unconscious" was used by various authors, poets, artists, psychologists, starting from the German romantics. It would be too great an oversimplification to believe that all the variety of mental processes refers only to procreation and improving the quality of life. Moreover, real life refutes this naive behaviorism every day.
If the life of an animal is subject to the need to obtain food, procreate and provide for its offspring, then we will not find anything like this in the human world. All animals are attracted by the same thing, and each person is attracted by something different. This is the second difference. Therefore, in the human psyche, we do not find anything similar to innate and unconditioned instincts. If it is possible to create ideal conditions for an animal to preserve and continue life, then with a person such a story does not go away. He also does not have any universal instincts, everyone finds their own way of pleasure.
How is it? For example, a person burns himself on an iron and pulls back his hand. Feeling pain, any of us will show the instinct of self-preservation. It is obvious. First, you are talking about reflexes, and this is far from the same as instincts. Instinct is, after all, a programmed form of behavior, and not just a reflexive muscle contraction.
Secondly, not everyone has these reflexes. For example, under hypnosis or in moments of extreme nervous tension, many people stop feeling pain and can hold a hot iron in the palm of their hand and get burns without experiencing any pain and without showing any reflexes. This suggests that reflexes are not so certain, and pain is the same product of mental life, as, for example, the ability to see one's reflection in a mirror.
In the animal world, we, of course, do not find anything like this, since the human body is derived from his unconscious, and the body of the animal - from the behavioral program embedded in it. A hare who knows how to beat a drum never thinks about how talented he is and whether he was born to serve the music, so his fingertips will never go numb before a performance, like many pianists.
He lives by prescribed instinctive programs that trainers successfully use in their manipulations. They also try to carry out some training, coding and training with a person, but they only work as much as the subject himself believes in them. As soon as he understands that, say, enelpishniks breed him, the effect disappears by itself.
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Are not all our actions in one way or another dictated by the instinct to preserve life? We follow the rules of the road so as not to take unnecessary risks, and do not succumb to the spontaneous instincts of which you mentioned. I don’t think there is anything spontaneous in the drives. All of them are clearly structured and have their own logic.
It is instincts that make us cut our finger as punishment for an incorrectly taken flat, for example. At the same time, under certain circumstances, a person can sacrifice his life for his homeland. From the point of view of evolution, it is completely wrong to change life for some speculative principles or to commit suicide, because those around you do not understand your music. The primate is not capable of such behavior, it violates its program. But from the point of view of man, it is precisely such actions that go beyond common sense that distinguish us from animals. Actions dictated by conscience, taste, faith, desire, madness or passion - this is what we consider the most human in ourselves and this is what makes us human.
What about the sexual instinct? One way or another, everyone has it. The sexual behavior of primates can indeed be described by instincts: the male will copulate with any healthy female at a convenient time for this. However, there is nothing like this in human relationships. People copulate not at all for procreation, they are guided by hundreds of other motives.
This is getting pleasure, and domination or collecting, the exercise of power, self-affirmation, fulfillment of duty, the doom of self-identification, and so on. How many people - so many sexuality. This alone casts doubt on the existence of the sexual instinct.
Can you imagine a male macaque copulating only with cellists, and all other females simply don't exist for him? Or a gorilla who gets aroused by a grazing pronunciation and will never mate with other males? Or hamadryas, who collects antique coins and generally does not have sexual relations with anyone?
And in the world of people, we meet only such examples. There are simply no others. A male human will never mate with any healthy female at any appropriate time. In order to engage in sexual relations, we humans, at the very least, need desire. Each of us, of course, has a sexual program, but everyone has their own program, there is no common human sexuality, and we do not know anything about it, which is why we are so often blown away at the wrong time and with not the most ideal partner. Neither science nor psychoanalysis have found any innate and unconditional forms of sexual behavior in humans.
It turns out that each person has their own sexuality? Sure. And it folds like a mosaic, like a painting painted with strokes of small perversions, according to Freud. Any neurotic has in his sexual fantasy the features of these perversions: fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, violence, submission, helplessness, incest - everyone fantasizes about this in one way or another and plays perversion And for someone, if your partner does not have a mole on his little finger legs, no sexual relationship is possible. Or, if she does not have a mezzo-soprano voice, all desire is lost.
Our sexuality functions only due to the fact that each of us deviates from the norm in one way or another. Spirituality, morality and love, from the point of view of primates, looks ridiculous and inappropriate. Instead of getting food, mating and feeding offspring, people write poems to each other, make movies, study the structure of the atom, watch dreams, start relationships, get to know themselves and constantly engage in some kind of rubbish. Instead of evolution, they came up with some kind of love, some kind of soul, which in fact only interferes with reproduction.
Of course, love is a perversion if you look at it through the eyes of a naive Darwinist. If you look at a person from the point of view of an animal, it turns out that we are either nature's mistakes or its dead-end branches. We want this or that partner precisely because he means something to us, in him we discover the primary feature of our identification, that charm that we can neither understand nor fully explain - this is the secret of sexuality. The person we want represents something for us, that is, carries the signifier around which our sexuality is built. And if it is not there, then no Viagra will help.
Isn't it obvious that women like successful men because they can provide offspring, and men like women with big breasts and wide hips because it speaks of the ability to mother? Yes, but some people don't like big breasts. And in general, not all men like women … Well, this is already a deviation.
Sexuality is made up of deviations. Falling in love is already a deviation from the program of chaotic reproduction. Love affection is needed so that a man takes care of his family and his offspring, and does not leave the woman immediately after sex, leaving her alone with the children. it is an evolutionary necessity. Something too many men have no idea about evolution.
Can culture also be explained in terms of evolution? Surely you can. But it would be too much of an oversimplification to think that Dante and Leonardo were losers, doing unnecessary things, so they did not become alpha males, and therefore not a single female gave birth to offspring. From an evolutionary point of view, Leonardo da Vinci is a dead-end branch, a culled individual, extra genetic material.
These great people sublimated their sexuality in order to create spiritual and moral guidelines for all of humanity.
As an individual, Leonardo, perhaps, did not contribute to the continuation of the family, but he did an incredible amount for science and culture. and this is his contribution to human evolution. Indeed, speaking about the nature of man and his evolution, we rather mean spiritual values. The physiological structure has hardly changed over the last million years, but the psyche has become fundamentally different. I would say that civilization forms the mental apparatus and the mental structure.
We are changing with the world. However, it is not always worth generalizing. The psychoanalyst never extends his conclusions to all of humanity, remaining within the framework of particular cases.
"Psychology" 2013