Freud and Fareed

Does the Austrian neurologist have what it takes to survive in Pakistan?

‘If Freud was born in Pakistan he would be Fareed,’ quips ‘Pir’ Afzal Rizvi. Fareed or not, Freud would have specimens innumerable to draw his study from.

Reputed psychiatrist Yusuf Mirza says, “Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, worked on understanding human behaviour and personality. According to Freudian theory, humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them.”

Khawaja Fareed of today’s Pakistan would bang his head against the nearest “Jangla Bus” in sheer frustration because it would completely conflict with the unconscious and other parts of Freud’s theory. At least the Pakistani leadership is very consciously, blatantly and aggressively pursuing a very asexually self-destructive path while remaining in perpetual conflict for supremacy against the Army. The public keeps deafeningly quiet while the country is being subjected to financial rape. He would fail to psychoanalyse the reason for anyone to vote for those known to have a bad record of accomplishment.

Freud’s other major work was The Interpretation of Dreams, an analysis of dreams in relation to unconscious desires and experiences. Khawaja Fareed would probably never be able to publish it because Pakistanis have very persistent, unrealistic and conflicting dreams about their supremacy, independence and religious righteousness.

Another important theory Freud propounded was The Ego and the Id, in which the human mind was divided into the ‘Id, the ‘Ego’ and the ‘Superego’. The Pakistani Khawaja Fareed would find everyone having a watermelon sized ‘Ego’ on his or her heads. They would have another watermelon sized ‘Id’ but an eggshell of a ‘Superego’ that is just for display.

Khawaja Fareed would not even dare visit Freud’s five stages of psychosexual development – the Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent and the Genital. If he did do that then he would find the majority of the general population stuck in the Oral stage with their thumbs in their mouths. Soon after that, Khawaja Fareed would either commit suicide or would meet his end overdosed on heroin or on a target killer’s bullets!

I could not help but be reminded of Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Representation, published in 1819. He states that needs with their roots buried deep in childhood, if not identified and failure to master them interfere in later stages of life in success both at social and emotional levels. States Chamberlain, “In Freud’s Vienna, the high level of social and sexual hypocrisy made many people mentally ill, hence the need for therapeutic practice.” (Lesley Chamberlain is the author of The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud”)

Fareed may have supported my suggestion of NOTA which I had aggressively pursued over years. Before 2013 elections, ECP did favour it but was dropped just before the elections. NOTA is inclusion of an empty box on the ballot paper stating ‘None of the above’, thereby rejecting all contesting candidates in a constituency. In an earlier article I had written, “What weightage do the votes cast for NOTA signify if at all? Logical follow-up to this scenario should be to call for a by-election with fresh candidates in the above given scenario. This will make contestants more answerable to the people they represent. This will make them more answerable in terms of broken promises to people they represent. It will also make them more answerable to the people in cases where rampant corruption is committed, if any. In the final analysis, let the people decide whom to vote for. That is the essence of democracy. This should also mean they cannot be appointed as advisors and chairpersons of organisations.”

Ego is big issue with us. Fareed would have no dearth of specimens to choose from. From bemoaning the quality of food served to angry young offspring of “big people” breaking signals, breaking necks of annoying minions, killing a few here and there, transferring irritable government employees trying to do an honest job, are just a few examples. Big egos lead to big problems. Remember Snow White’s stepmother Eva? Boy, did she have a big ego. Eva could easily have ancestral roots in present Pakistan.

Her chant “Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of them all? is a brilliant example of an ego as big as a watermelon for a head. Imagine the people needed to be sorted out by Malika Emrana. (Oops Queen Eva) What a huge ego that needs to be stroked continuously! The ‘Mirror Syndrome’ would have kept Fareed occupied for years. Our people have categories of being big. We have the political big, the professional big, the mafia big, the tout big, the army big, the religious big, unnecessary big… the list is endless.

Too much of ego leads to use of too much of “I” as stated in a definition. Is that why monarchs use the term “we” instead of “I’ to overemphasise?

If Bertrand Russell were alive and born in the Land of the Pure, he would definitely have been born as Butt Risaldar. According to Russell, “One of the approaching symptoms of nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” Butt Risaldar being an intelligent philosopher would immediately put two and two together. He would explain to us that our society in general and our politicians in particular are in a state of perpetual nervous breakdown. They perpetually think they are doing work that is important whereas there is no work being done effectively. There are institutional and individual failures all around. Butt Risaldar would have spent a lifetime categorising this alone.

However, lest we forget, its Fareed we must revert to. According to Freud, money was akin to excrement, our homespun Fareed would have gone nuts over the ‘big’ peoples’ love for this form of excrement at the cost of whatever. Complete lack of self-discipline and an urge to have more and more would point towards needs with their roots buried deep in childhood.

Sigmund Freud in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love states, “The behaviour of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.” Is it a coincidence that those falling in different categories of ‘big’ egos with great love for ‘big’ money and more often than not being ‘big’ enough to possess it too, also boast of more than one wife or a voracious sex appetite?

A question for Fareed to answer.