Presence in culture

I allow myself a critique of the Freudian paradigm: what if human nature were intrinsically good? And I propose the concept of “presence in culture” to move beyond the id-ego-superego triad, in order to cultivate a consciously chosen emancipation.

Freud’s Topography and Its Cultural Presuppositions

Traditional psychoanalysis, as conceptualized by Freud and revolutionary for its time, proposes a fascinating paradigm structured around what he calls the id, the ego, and the superego. To this tripartition, I oppose a hypothesis, born of maturation, which seems to me more contemporary: “Presence in culture.” It is necessary to consider the cultural context in which Freudian concepts emerged. Indeed, Freud immediately faced many detractors, and psychoanalysis has evolved considerably since its origins. Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, and Jacques Lacan, among others, quickly proposed alternative readings of the psyche, emphasizing the importance of early relationships, language, or the subject’s structure, and challenging the rigidity of the Freudian model. Nevertheless, this origin remains a structuring reference point that, in my view, carries the potential for great psychic violence—avoidable if we adopt a different perspective.

In Freud’s conception, the id embodies the drives: a primitive, animal, and selfish being, unconscious of its environment and obeying only the immediate satisfaction of its primary needs. The superego represents social norms, culture, and morality, which enable humanity to be constituted through rational mastery of relationships, particularly through foundational prohibitions such as that of incest. These prohibitions would allow the primitive animals we intrinsically are to civilize themselves and access their humanity. Between these two agencies, the ego, our consciousness, plays the role of rational mediator, allowing us to exist as individuals caught between primal drives and a social organization beneficial to collective life.

This vision, undeniably powerful and effective for understanding many psychic phenomena, nonetheless rests on a presupposition that Freud does not demonstrate—an axiom constructed by the bourgeois culture in which he himself was unconsciously immersed. This presupposition considers the human being as naturally wild and untamed. This fear of the animal within us, based on ignorance at the time of animal societies and the ethnology of so-called “savage” peoples—who may prove to be far more civilized than Western societies priding themselves on being so—profoundly shapes his theory without his awareness.

The Inversion of Id and Superego: When Civilization Becomes Barbarism

If we push Freudian reasoning to its limit, animals, lacking a “superego,” should do nothing but kill each other, with no intrinsic capacity for organization, empathy, love, or respect for the collective. Yet the vast majority of animal species with whom we coexist are older than us and have managed to endure far better than our own species, which, being younger, decimates itself while also decimating animal populations—something they have never done to us.

This society, which considers itself humanist by its texts, actually uses these same texts to dehumanize what does not resemble it: the savage, the animal, nature. It seeks to dominate all otherness and destroy what escapes the supposed rationality of its texts. Slavery tragically illustrates this inhuman lie that justified, for centuries, the destruction of other human beings under the pretext that they were not truly human—something everyone knew to be false. Supported by so-called civilized texts, this hypocritical fiction legitimized the worst crimes and dominations. It created the current wealth of the West and the terrible inequalities that still persist today on our planet (notably the appalling power of great powers over the African continent, due to purely material interests).

History shows that at every stage of colonization, the violence and barbarism perpetrated by Westerners surpassed in cruelty and inhumanity anything that existed in the cultures they destroyed. Aimé Césaire expresses this perfectly in Discourse on Colonialism (1950):

“It would first be necessary to study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the strict sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to greed, to violence, to racial hatred, to moral relativism.”
[…]
“A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.”
[…]
“Civilizations rot not by the head but by the heart.”
[…]
“Between colonizer and colonized, there is only room for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, policing, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-satisfaction, boorishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. [...] I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, ‘achievements,’ diseases cured, standards of living raised above themselves. I speak of societies emptied of themselves, cultures trampled, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions assassinated, artistic magnificence annihilated, extraordinary possibilities suppressed.”

The so-called civilized revealed themselves to be the true bloodthirsty barbarians, devoid of any consideration for others. The paradox is striking: the superego, supposedly representing social organization repressing animal impulses, itself becomes an id deploying the worst of what we wrongly attribute to animality—disorganization and danger. There is thus an inversion between the id and the superego, the latter extinguishing all empathy and altruistic intuition to justify the domination of humans over everything, and primarily of men over the entire world, including the half of humanity that is women. This inversion invites us to radically rethink our conception of human nature and civilization, recognizing that what we call “culture” can sometimes be the vector of the most extreme violence.

The Illusion of Human Rationality

Without wishing to diminish Freud’s revolutionary contribution in his historical context, it is time to take a new step in our understanding of the human psyche. Freud, a prisoner of his cultural era, could not question certain fundamental presuppositions that structured his thought. Likewise, we remain blind today to certain truths that future science will reveal. Humility is required in the face of this perpetual progression of knowledge.

The Freudian system of id, ego, and superego rests on a fundamental hypocrisy: it presents us as civilized beings while masking our deep barbarity. But this vision can be reversed. If we consider that human nature is intrinsically good rather than harmful, that the child naturally desires to learn and that intuition spontaneously drives us toward love rather than destruction, then violent acts would arise more from cultural acquisition than from innate impulses. A different culture would produce different behaviors.

This other vision of human nature radically transforms our conception of education and work; it is the foundation of new pedagogies and all “liberated company” approaches. The child (and the adult) is no longer seen as a disorderly being to be tamed, but as expressing, even in apparently chaotic reactions, a desire for humanity. Language ceases to be a normative straitjacket and becomes a support that recognizes, clarifies, and deepens our intrinsic humanity. The goal is no longer to dominate our human nature but to cultivate it.

Agriculture offers an enlightening metaphor: permaculture, with its seemingly disordered exchanges between diverse species that mutually enrich each other, proves more sustainable and productive than extensive monoculture. The latter, despite its short-term mechanical efficiency, destroys in a few decades ecosystems that took millions of years to form. Human “rationality” thus quickly annihilates natural wealth.

The Power of Conformism

Twentieth-century psychology and economics have demonstrated the irrationality of most conscious human decisions. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics in 2002 for his work on behavioral economics, writes:

“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
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“We each think that we are much more rational than we actually are.”
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“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story their mind has managed to construct.”
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“The illusion that we understand the past feeds overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”
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“The human brain cannot comprehend very large or very small numbers. It would be helpful to acknowledge this fact.”

This shatters the Freudian conception of a rational ego mediating between the irrational id and the rational superego. The conscious ego, far from being rational, is influenced by its environment and especially by social conformism. Decisions are made not through rational reflection but by conforming to the majority, even when those decisions are totally irrational. Rational thought requires critical thinking—the ability to weigh pros and cons autonomously. Yet humans daily conform to rules they do not even seek to understand, for fear of harsh repression.

The example of slavery again tragically illustrates this pseudo-rationality. Scientists of the time, enjoying the same legitimacy as today’s, “rationally” proved, through supposedly indisputable “scientific facts,” the inferiority of Black people. This supposed Western rationality, in my view, represents the id itself—a culturally constructed id that tramples our true human nature.

As Olivier Maurel states in Yes, Human Nature Is Good! (2009): “The human behavior of humiliating, torturing, or causing pain to one’s neighbor is found nowhere else among other species.” Such manifestations are linked to conditioning and education that confront the child very early with violence.

Incest, presented by Freud as the structuring prohibition of human societies, actually reveals the fundamental hypocrisy of our system. Incestuous contexts, adult projections onto children, the number of children abused by parents unaware of their actions—these perpetuate a cycle of violence. The Catholic Church perfectly illustrates this system that protects abusers. Why this protection? Because abuse is structuring: it manufactures domination through hypocrisy, pretending that all is well, that equality exists, when reality is quite different.

The Original Hypocrisy of Human Rights

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 proclaimed universal equality while explicitly excluding women and slaves from this political humanity. Olympe de Gouges, who dared to publish in 1791 her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, including enslaved people, was guillotined in 1793—not for her Girondin sympathies as official history claims, but for having challenged the patriarchal and colonial order.

The argument that “people were not aware” of inequalities at the time is a historical lie. Just as openly sexist television programs from twenty years ago do not reflect a pre-MeToo unconsciousness but systemic impunity, voices denouncing oppression already existed. Charles Fourier wrote as early as the 1770s that “social progress and changes of period operate in proportion to the progress of women toward liberty.” Anarchist feminists like Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, or Louise Michel denounced marriage: “What I affirm is that a permanent relationship of dependence harms the development of personality, and that is what I fight against” (Voltairine de Cleyre).

Likewise, the women who demanded the right to vote stood up to a social order that, under the guise of benevolence and protection, concealed a reality fundamentally brutal and destructive to their emancipation. They were labeled “dangerous furies” by their detractors—an expression meant to marginalize and discredit their activism. Yet, in defending women’s suffrage, they embodied the authentic defense of humanism and equality: their struggle was based on the conviction that every human being, regardless of sex, should enjoy the same civic and political rights. Through their courage, solidarity, and perseverance, these women paved the way for a more just society, affirming the dignity and universality of human rights.

The Criminalization of Female Pleasure

Female desire has been systematically scorned and regarded as a social danger, while the illusion of masculine strength was built up through conquests. Paradoxically, the female body possesses an organ dedicated exclusively to pleasure, which is not the case for the male body. This pleasure, instead of being seen as a space for sharing and fulfillment—a wealth offered to individuals and collectives—has been repressed and demonized.

Physical love, the quintessential social act—gentle, vibrant, life-creating—has never been exclusively dedicated to procreation; all animal societies show that it also exists for the pleasure and fulfillment of individuals, which is necessary for collective balance. Patriarchal texts thus sowed in women’s minds this “poisonous seed” of guilt, leading them to mortify themselves for their own desire. This internalization of oppression may be the most perverse victory of the system of domination: making the oppressed the guardians of their own servitude.

The Moral Asymmetry Between Male Desire and Female Liberation

The cultural construction of a valorization of male desire and the organization of female prostitution have led to the withering of loving bonds. This hierarchy has transmitted to generations an unequal social structure, preventing mutual enrichment. Spaces of fulfillment that advocate sexual freedom without exclusivity as a path to human enrichment—like tantra, which Osho introduced to the West and especially to the US in the 1970s—have been criminalized. These places of expression of our purest humanity were stigmatized as spaces of depravity, while the real depraved are the hypocrites who, believing themselves to embody good, violate and destroy by their moralism the possibilities of authentic fulfillment.

The generalized unconsciousness that normalizes this asymmetry is clearly seen in the different treatment of infidelity by gender. A man with multiple affairs will be forgiven; his impulse seen as a manifestation of an id insufficiently controlled by a still fragile ego, but his power and conquests remain valued—he is still a Don Juan. A woman, culturally constructed as gentle, emotional, and romantic, who lives her sexuality beyond the conjugal framework will be banished, degraded in her maternal role, labeled hysterical and subject to her impulses, or, more cruelly, as a woman of little virtue deserving the contempt of those close to her—and often her own guilt for having “let herself go,” for having “betrayed trust.” Her act actually reveals the hypocrisy of the collective superego system, and it is precisely for this reason that she must be discredited: legitimizing such acts of female liberation would make it impossible to perpetuate this system of domination presented as collective virtue.

Even Voltairine de Cleyre, a free-thinking and free-loving feminist, was considered depraved by some of her contemporary feminists, even though she embodied the fulfillment of her freedom and her ability to enrich the world with love. Each person struggles in this deleterious context for human fulfillment, caught between moral injunctions and authentic aspirations.

Toward Presence in Culture: Moving Beyond the Freudian Model

Faced with this impasse, I propose moving beyond the Freudian triad of id-ego-superego to embrace the concept of “presence in culture”. We cannot destroy the culture that shaped us and into which we were born—it is our environment. However, we can choose to emancipate ourselves within this context, to raise our level of consciousness about our functioning and identity.

My approach is based on the conviction that human nature is fundamentally good. By connecting with our essence as living beings, by drawing on this source of energy and spirituality that constitutes our being, we can align with ourselves: listen to our intuitions, distinguish social conformism from what seems natural and enriching to us, and gradually found our legitimacy and dignity as living beings on our own terms. This authentic presence infuses more humanity, respect, equality, and love around us—a relational ecology born from our connection to our deep instinctive nature.

The “in” is important: we do not reject culture but remain present within it to set it in motion. As John Dewey says in The Public and Its Problems (1927), “Democracy is not a finished form of government. It is life itself, the idea of community. It must be continually explored, discovered, and reshaped.”

This proposition so upends our moral bearings that it may seem immoral. But it is common morality that is a perverse hypocrisy—let us look it in the face, even if few are aware of it.

Those who seem to question everything, who shake up norms, should be seen as sources of inspiration and learning. They dare to open what will allow more tenderness and respect to be infused into our hypocritical and violent Western world. I propose the deepest respect for what disturbs us, seeing it not as destructive disorder but as a question posed to our locks—a key allowing some of them to be opened, to bring movement and live better. True morality considers our altruistic nature and recognizes that our freedom is the greatest gift we can offer the world to inspire it to become better.