We are also haunted by a collective unconscious inherited from our ancestors and culture. Regrets, a history of Loss, and the legacy of Anger are passed on from generation to generation. That is why Dr. Freud was asking Daniel about the history of his family. It can be traumatizing when the train is drawing in the peremptory ideation of many people. We find that there are many societies in which there is a history of collective regret, loss and anger (slavery, war, ostracism, etc.). These collective, unconsciously held regrets, loses and experiences of anger produce what is now called the “social unconscious” (Hopper and Weinberg, 2019).
Members of this traumatized society held a common set of troubling images. Citizens often report similar regret-filled dreams and stressful bouts of loss-associated sorrow. Feelings of anger are easily triggered by events that produce nothing more than mild stress in many other societies. With this powerful alignment of internal and external material, we become victims of personal and collective peremptory ideation. This new unconscious coalition demands attention. We are obsessed, closed-minded, passionate, and regretful. Sometimes, we are driven to action.
Anxious Passengers: Collective regret, loss and anger can escalate collectively engaged peremptory ideation. Everyone on the train is uneasy about what is happening in their society or what has occurred in the past. Racism looms big and is often unacknowledged in American societies—and in those found in South Africa and Indonesia. The anxiety associated with this Regret, Loss and Anger can, in turn, be produced by the loss of confidence in a chosen leader or by mild public protests regarding some social ordinance. It might very well be that the “social unconscious” material appears in our internal peremptory ideation. This being the case, one can imagine that an ideational train carries or is at least aligned with external images—such as one’s impressions of a leader or a public protest.
A “perfect” storm of prejudice, intolerance, fear of the “other,” and (eventually) violence is created. This is where Freud’s “soft” alignment with the Marxist oriented Frankfurt School might come to the surface. He is concerned about the kind of work Daniel is now doing—but does not make a forceful stand against the business of advertising. At some level, Dr. Freud would be troubled by the way advertisements generate feelings of regret among consumers. The ads also point dramatically to the losses we experience, be they losses associated with illness, poor financial decisions, or family time. The ad agencies can offer a remedy for the loss, and reasons to avoid regret. They can also, indirectly, promote anger (against the wrong product, wrong political party, or wrong life priorities). Above all, the ads provide us with potential reasons to be anxious personally and collectively. We are given good reasons to worry about our bodily odors as well as our financial future.
