A French psychoanalyst says it's time to stop patronizing “grudging people” who end up voting for “alienated” politicians

As a society, we are increasingly resentful, this is the truth, he believes French philosopher and psychoanalyst Cynthia Fleury. She gave an interview to the HotNews audience.

• And resentment is something very destructive, Cynthia Fleury believes.
• “We must not diminish the power of resentment! Let us not think that it is just a little scourge, that it is some pathology. No.”
• However, Ranchiuna does not only have motivations related to economic failures, believes Cynthia Fleury.
• “Socio-economic injustices give the resentful an opportunity to express themselves. That is, they take the liberty to say that, because of these injustices, they have become resentful. But it is not true.”
• Who are today's grudges?

Much of what is happening in the world today, Cynthia Fleury believes, can be explained by us getting stuck in the victim position:

“It's like you put on smokey glasses and you see the whole world a lot darker. You don't get to see the diversity, the beauty, anything,” Fleury told HotNews.

In the interview for the HotNews audience, conducted with the help of translator Claudia Davidson-Novosivschei, the author also talks about the resources we have at hand to protect ourselves and to protect democracy.

Sometimes this frustration stems from real suffering. Other times, no

HotNews:- To begin with, how would you define resentment in a way that everyone can understand? At what moments does it appear in a person's life and what are the main factors that trigger it?
Cynthia Fleury:- Resentment is rumination. A continuous, deadly rumination. Max Scheler (German philosopher – no) says it's like a toxic boil inside us. But there is a difference between resentment and resentful impulse. The latter is a drive that runs through all of us at some point.

On the other hand, resentment is something that is constantly pressed upon us, it is a poison. Poison that stays in us. How does it appear? Against the background of a deficit of symbolization and sublimation.

Resentment is never the psychic translation of suffering, of injustices done to us. Even if, objectively speaking, there may be suffering brought on by the injustices suffered, resentment is a construction at the level of fantasizing, an interpretive delusion, in the psychoanalytic sense.

Sometimes this frustration starts with real suffering, but on the other hand, there are also cases where there is no suffering and still resentment. Just as there can be suffering, but it does not amount to resentment at all.

“Everything that happens, absolutely everything, is justified from this perspective of the victim”

– What happens to an individual who gets stuck in resentment? How does it affect their thinking, relationships, and ability to act?
– The individual who enters this loop of resentment, of resentful rumination, de-responsibility and “essentializes” himself, that is, what becomes essential for him is only his position as a victim.

Being busy playing the role of victim, he disengages from the world, so that the interpretative delusion we were talking about ends up, in fact, keeping the subject in this position of victim.

Every time, everything that happens, absolutely everything, is justified from this perspective of the victim, in which the subject believes that he has no responsibility. Resentment makes man, practically, keep spinning in an inner circle, which deprives him of the ability to have any influence on the world, to make the world change.

And then it just ends up denigrating the surrounding things. Everyone seems to be against him and everyone must be vilified. It's like putting on some smokey glasses and seeing the whole world much darker. You don't get to see the diversity, the beauty, anything.

And this interpretive veil leads you to devalue and denigrate what's around, without appreciating it, which will have an influence on your personality. And you end up becoming rancid, sour, and the moment you can't take it anymore, when your stomach already hurts from how much sourness is collected in you, you turn to the other person and throw both denigration and lack of appreciation at him.

“There are people who go through enormous injustices and don't end up resentful”

– We live in an unstable world, where we have economic, police and social crises. How does this context influence the emergence of resentment at the societal level?
– That's right. Socio-economic injustices are the perfect alibi and help people release their resentful drives. But they do not breed resentment, although there are enormous injustices. But the question is how we fight against them. And the answer is not through resentment, but through the sublimation of resentment.

Because resentment leads to something reactionary and ends up generating an equally negative reaction, which in turn has no way of leading to justice or social justice. Socio-economic injustices, which I said exist objectively, give the resentful an opportunity to express themselves. That is, they take the liberty of saying that because of these injustices, they have become resentful. But that's not true.

It's a lie, because they were already resentful, which shows in the way they talk about these injustices. On the other hand, there are people who go through some trauma and some enormous injustice and who do not end up resentful. Resentment is flawed reasoning around an event that ends up being interpreted as an injustice.

However, I do not want the conclusion to be drawn that institutions have no role. They can have a role when they don't live up to their purpose – to ensure that there is as much equity as possible and the social contract is respected by everyone. Moreover, it must protect us against resentful impulses, especially through education.

But, I return, resentment is a deficit of symbolization and sublimation before it is one of materialization.

“Democracy is weakened by all this release of collective resentment”

– What is the link between resentment and the fragility of democracy? The greater the resentment of the population, the more we are in danger of destroying a democracy? How do you see things?
– Certainly, democracy is weakened by all this release of collective resentment, at the level of society. We must not diminish the power of resentment!

Let's not think that it's just a small scourge, that it's some kind of pathology. Not. Resentment can endanger democracy, and we see this very well: there are individuals, people in society, who consciously choose, in the electoral elections, dictators or, better said, they choose politicians who are totally against public freedoms, as well as individual freedoms. Why do they do this? Because our voters are seething with resentment. The danger is absolute! In this context, democratic institutions must come up with robust tools to help us fight resentment. Resentment is both an individual and a public issue.

“Let's tolerate the disappointments that democracy produces for us”

– With this background, what resources or tools do we have at our disposal to protect democracy at the individual level?
– At the individual level we can work so that the individual accepts, tolerates uncertainty, the disappointing condition of democracy and also increases his tolerance for criticism.

What does this condition mean? Basically, let's tolerate the disappointments that democracy brings us. And, once we work on this tolerance, we develop an ability to go through various crises and disappointments well and remain aware of our actions.

To help this process, to develop tolerance and stay in control of the situation, there is, of course, psychoanalytic treatment, but there is also a free press, which has the freedom to express itself and which is very important.

The individual must be exposed to culture and education so as to increase this tolerance for criticism and disappointment. But the tolerance for deception generated by democracy must be seen as a conquest. Why? Because in an authoritarian regime, if you say that the regime disappoints you, you are sentenced to death. In a democracy, you can be disappointed by the regime, but the idea would be that by increasing this tolerance and through culture, through education, we get to overcome disappointment in a constructive way. But, once again, the existence of deception in democracy should be seen as a conquest, not a deficiency.

How to become free

– Talk about individuation as an essential process. How would you explain this concept in a way that everyone can understand and why it is important not only for the individual but also for society?
– Individuation is the way in which the subject becomes free. But why did I use individuation and not subjectivity, which is the same thing? Because I wanted to get to the distinction between individuation and individualism. The principle of individuation is a good one, but it can be perverted into individualism. For individuation, the subject needs otherness.

It can only be built in the relationship with the institutions, in the relationship with the other. An individualist is a subject closed to himself, who makes a passion for himself. In fact, individualists atomize society, because they do not enter into relationship. Whereas, in individuation, you find your freedom and develop as a subject in alterity, but as an individualist you destroy society.

Individualist drift does exist in our societies and has consequences for the rule of law. It is rightly said that individualism is a danger to the rule of law, and indeed it is, because individualists deliberately disinterest themselves, they end up with a lack of interest in others. Thus, they end up voting alienated subjects, those who are not democrats.

We are thus in a society, like a Möbius strip, in which you can have the rule of law, as long as you have subjects who are not alienated and who make the right choice, that is, the choice of democratic principles.

– Can we heal from resentment?
– This book of mine makes a subsidiary claim, namely that we can heal from resentment. It would be unethical, moreover, to say that we cannot heal ourselves. This is at the level of ethical principle. But, in reality, things are not that simple.

I don't know why, but there are patients who are simply consumed with resentment. Some who are in denial, who don't realize they are resentful, and others who realize they are. And yet there are people in both categories who don't want to come out, who don't find that strength in them to come out of resentment. They are trapped there as in a kind of permanent loop. On the other hand, there are also patients who manage to break free.

It is difficult for me to say which factors help or which, on the contrary, make people remain resentful. All I can say, in conclusion, is that yes, in principle, we can heal from resentment, but practically it is different from person to person.

Who is Cynthia Fleury?

Special guest of the FilosoFII Fest Festival, recently organized by Trei Publishing House, Cynthia Fleury specializes in philosophy and psychoanalysis, full professor of the Health and Human Sciences department at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in Paris, but also full professor of philosophy at the University Hospital Group of Psychiatry and Neurosciences in Paris. One of the best-known promoters of medical humanism in France, with a doctorate under the guidance of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Fleury has written books dedicated to individuation and the rule of law.

In her most recent book, “Here rests the bitter. Healing from resentment”, as noted in its description, the writer starts from the psychoanalysis of Freud and Reich, but also from the philosophy of Nietzsche, Scheler, Adorno or Cioran, to explain the psychic and institutional origins of the resentments that grind us down.