A Psychoanalytic Note on the Antinomic Freedom and Equality

Lee, Byung Wook

Abstract

The ideology of freedom and equality has been very long-standing hot issue and a difficult problem to solve. Many persons have been sacrificed for their freedom and equality. But freedom and equality really seem to have peaceful coexistence in any structure of a society because guaranteed freedom is likely to lead to the inequality, on the other hand, guaranteed equality is likely to lead to the restricted freedom. To speak figuratively, it looks like a wooden iron, in other words, they are antinomic. Human-being has been trapped in this trial and error repetitively. I trace this problem in terms of psychoanalytic theory, and then proceed to discuss the issues of basic deficit and conflict. Surely we are accustomed to Freudian psychic determinism, but many philosophers insist the existence of human free will, and do not agree to the unconscious. Nevertheless psychoanalytic theory presents many evidences for the unfree and unequal inner conditions intrapsychically or interpsychically. All neurotics are unfree and unequal from their unconscious power, so far as in their free associations. Even so they are unfree from various deficit and conflict, or psychologic trauma. Hence we have need for the insightful understanding of the basic inner deficit and conflict as the contradictory roots of freedom and equality, accordingly we can expect the desirable mature and insane society based on the proper compromise and concession, mutual respect and common sense. I believe those societies as the real democracy.