Abstract
According to Behr, today the French Revolution ‘is still a hot potato’ (p.143) and thus by no means is ‘over’ as Francois Furet had declared in 1978. It is not, because its ‘inherent paradox’ so far has not been resolved. In the revolution, ‘two contradictory forces emerged side by side and fed into each other—the thinking of the enlightenment, a product of man’s evolving intellect, co-existed compatibly with an upsurge of rage driven essentially by man’s animal instincts’. For Behr, ‘this apparent contradiction has to be understood, if we are to make sense of the violence which swept away so many people and institutions’ (p.243).
In his attempt to understand the ‘contradictory forces’ at work in the Revolution, Behr was guided, as he explains, by a concept taken from Arthur Miller’s book Timebends (1987), namely ‘a unified concept of human beings, the intimate psychological side joined with the social-political’ (Miller, p.587). According to Behr, this concept, ‘corresponds to the holistic approach’ which ‘gained currency in the early 20th-century (Goldstein)’ and attempted to integrate ‘the study of brain functions, group dynamics, individual psychology and interpersonal relationships’ (p.2). T/his approach, he emphasizes, should not be confused with ‘psychohistory’, a concept which he thinks is ‘a hybrid concept’ because it presupposes the existence of a ‘pure’ history as a narrative which can be told outside its socio-psychological context (p.2). Disentangling himself from the perils and pitfalls of ‘psychologizing’ social-historical events, Behr also makes sure that even to invoke (as he does) the force of ‘man’s animal instincts’ is incomplete without the social context, social trauma and social discourse. He writes: ‘If a myth is built out of traumatic experience, the characters who people the myth take on the role of victims and perpetrators of the trauma, shaped by time and emotions into allies and enemies’ (p.9). In this sense, he argues, that the conflict which underlays the French Revolution was as much a conflict of opposing mythologies as of political doctrines. On one side was the myth of power and privilege given by God to one ruler and passed down to ties of blood. Ranged against that was the myth of the tyrant who had enslaved the people and the heroes who would liberate them and lead them into a new world in which they would govern themselves and lead virtuous lives. (p.141)
Behr’s position therefore is that history and myth always ‘intertwine’. This is because ‘violence, regardless of its origins in revolution and war, results in trauma. The emotional concomitants of this produce a vicious cycle of revenge and hatred’ (p.141). And, due to this cycle, ‘ancient myths are constantly being updated to feed these emotions’ (p.141). This is the theoretical background against which Behr explores the paradoxes and contradictions of the French Revolution.
After a personal forward and a theoretical preamble he discusses ‘Violence and Enlightenment’, ‘The revolutionary Crowd: Bloodthirsty Mob’ or ‘Will of the people’ and the ‘Revolution versus Religion: God, Reason and the God of Reason’ in chapters four to six. Chapters seven to nine are dedicated to the fate of ‘Heroes, Tyrants and Martyrs: The Assassination of Marat and the Murder of the Grondins’, ‘The Reign of Terror’ and ‘The power of the group to destroy its leader: The Fall of Robespierre’. Chapter 10, finally, deals with the question of how ‘History and Myth Intertwine’, which was already referred to. Reminding us that much has happened between 1789 and 2014, he writes, ‘the 18th-century “might feel” quaintly disconnected to the modern world’ up to the point that its history has become telescoped into a serious of iconic images and cartoony characters: A king and queen besieged and then executed by bloodthirsty revolutionaries. Who are the goodies and who the baddies? It is quite difficult to tell them apart. They are all so ridiculous. (p.144)
However, such a view not only lacks compassion but is also utterly untrue, because ‘if we take away the costumes and period props . . . , we uncover a story which fits a dozen different social upheavals in today’s world (p.144). To take this position is risky from a historical point of view as it may be in danger of ignoring the contextual particularities of these ‘upheavals’ in favour of a common scheme. It is true, of course, in so far as it points out the on-going actuality of the event and its repercussions. Both are well captured by Kant who in his Conflict of Faculties (1795) had written: The recent Revolution of a people which is rich in spirit, may well either fail or succeed, accumulate misery or atrocity, but nevertheless arouses in the heart of all spectators (who are not in themselves caught up in it) a taking of sides according to desires which borders on enthusiasm and which, since its very expression was not without danger, can only have been caused by a moral disposition in the human race
What Kant formulated were the different perspectives of those participating in the revolution and the enthusiasm of its outside spectators. In Behr’s book the latter are represented by a quotation of l’ Abbé Sieyès who when asked what he had done during the revolution had replied: ‘J’ai vécu’ (I survived) (p.141). There is a dignity in this phrase and a compassion which defies any attempt (and be it one in terms of historical analysis) to ridicule the ruling political passions, moving the characters of those involved in the French Revolution. Although they all might look ‘so ridiculous’ in their aspirations from today’s perspective, they definitely do not, as actors within the historical figuration of their time. In Behr’s book, I found this empathy and compassion perhaps in the sketches of those actors given in the first three chapters of the book. Like, for instance, Louis XVI, the ‘scapegoat king’ who is depicted in chapter one: ‘He was a sickly, shy, strangely silent child with an obsessional cast of mind and a preference of solitary pastimes, the odd one among his siblings’ (p.13).
Then Maximilien Robespierre, ‘the mind of a fanatic’: ‘In appearance he was a pale-complexioned, slightly built, tense figure, dressed to the point of foppishness, wearing the powdered wig and costume of the aristocrats whom he hated. His behaviour at the tribune suggested a self-consciousness which betrayed itself in his efforts to appear taller than he was’ (p.26).
And, finally, in chapter three Georges Danton, ‘the passionate opportunist’: ‘Throughout his life, George Jacques Danton threw himself at the world with a recklessness which brought him grief and reward in equal measure. Unlike the fastidious Robespierre he exalted in physical pleasure and the fray of battle’. (p.38).
Regarding these carefully chiselled portraits one is reminded that psychiatry as a descriptive science grew out of literature and literary description, which today has become a kind of lost art Behr brings to life again. Interestingly, there is a less vivid, less ‘psychological’ characterisation of Marie Antoinette: ‘She was doubly a monster, partly because of her foreignness—a popular epithet was “l’ Austrichienne” (The Austrian bitch) —but even more because she was a woman’ (p.18).
If it were only for these few lines of elegant prose, and even if one would set aside all of its (weighty) arguments, Harold Behr’s book on the French Revolution would be a pleasure to read. However, as a group analytic reader, to confer literary praise is not my primary task. Therefore, and on more professional grounds, I would like to discuss a crucial statement made by Behr. He writes: ‘The fundamental flaw in the human species lies in its potential to turn on itself, to identify “Self” as “Other” and therefore dangerous’ (p.149). To my surprise, in this statement, I find a certain affinity to Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror-stage’ (Lacan, 1949) and his subsequent theory of aggression (cf. Lacan, 1948) although not intentional I suppose. Moreover, the statement illuminates this, and why Behr, throughout his book, emphasizes the ‘paranoid cycle’ as a core dynamic element of the French Revolution (and other revolutions).
What I find missing though are the more ‘depressive’ mechanisms of defence, like, for instance, the manic defence and/or the urge to make reparation as other important ingredients of revolutionary dynamics. Last but not least, I would to point to the book’s subtitle: ‘A Tale of Terror and Hope for Our Times’. Where does ‘hope’ for Behr come from? He offers two options: a setting and/or a lobby. ‘In order for the truth to emerge, a story has to be told again and again in a setting which is as free of inflammation and recrimination as possible’ (p.9). And: A lobby is needed within society, composed of its less traumatised elements, people who are free enough for the compulsive urges of the primitive brain to work against the principle of attack, vengeance and retaliation as an answer to trauma and in favour of mutual identification and a sense of shared predicament. (p.150)
It is to be hoped that Behr’s book on the French Revolution is met with the same enthusiasm among group analysts that Kant observed among his contemporaries with regard to this great historical event.