The Politics of Destruction: Three

Contemporary Configurations of
Hallucination: USSR, Polish PiS Party,
Islamic State 2nd Edition Bafoil
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-politics-of-destruction-three-contemporary-configu
rations-of-hallucination-ussr-polish-pis-party-islamic-state-2nd-edition-bafoil/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Hijaz: The First Islamic State Malik Dahlan

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-hijaz-the-first-islamic-state-
malik-dahlan/

The Cowboy's Rules: Book Three: 2nd Edition:

Contemporary Western Romance Maggie Carpenter

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-cowboys-rules-book-three-2nd-
edition-contemporary-western-romance-maggie-carpenter/

Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction: Intellectuals,

World Disorder, and the Politics of Empire 1st Edition
Christopher Britt

https://ebookmass.com/product/enlightenment-in-an-age-of-
destruction-intellectuals-world-disorder-and-the-politics-of-
empire-1st-edition-christopher-britt/

The Reshaping of West European Party Politics: Agenda-

Setting and Party Competition in Comparative
Perspective Christoffer Green-Pedersen

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-reshaping-of-west-european-
party-politics-agenda-setting-and-party-competition-in-
comparative-perspective-christoffer-green-pedersen/
From Party Politics to Personalized Politics?: Party
Change and Political Personalization in Democracies
Gideon Rahat

https://ebookmass.com/product/from-party-politics-to-
personalized-politics-party-change-and-political-personalization-
in-democracies-gideon-rahat/

The State of Texas: Government, Politics, and Policy

3rd Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-state-of-texas-government-
politics-and-policy-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/

The State of Texas: Government, Politics, and Policy

3rd Edition Sherri Mora

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-state-of-texas-government-
politics-and-policy-3rd-edition-sherri-mora/

The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State 2nd Edition

Daniel Béland

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-welfare-
state-2nd-edition-daniel-beland/

The State of Texas: Government, Politics, and Policy,

5e Sherri Mora

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-state-of-texas-government-
politics-and-policy-5e-sherri-mora/
THE SCIENCES PO SERIES IN
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND
POLITICAL ECONOMY

The Politics of
Destruction
Three Contemporary Configurations of
Hallucination: USSR, Polish PiS Party,
Islamic State
François Bafoil
Translated by Laurie Hurwitz
The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and
Political Economy

Series Editor
Alain Dieckhoff, Center for International Studies (CERI), Sciences
Po - CNRS, Paris, France

Advisory Editor
Miriam Perier, Center for International Studies (CERI), Sciences
Po - CNRS, Paris, France
The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy
focuses on the transformations of the international arena and of polit-
ical societies, in a world where the state keeps reinventing itself and
appears resilient in many ways, though its sovereignty is increasingly ques-
tioned. The series publishes books that have two main objectives: explore
the various aspects of contemporary international/transnational relations,
from a theoretical and an empirical perspective; and analyze the trans-
formations of political societies through comparative lenses. Evolution in
world affairs sustains a variety of networks from the ideological to the
criminal or terrorist that impact both on international relations and local
societies. Besides the geopolitical transformations of the globalized planet,
the new political economy of the world has a decided impact on its destiny
as well, and this series hopes to uncover what that is.
The series consists of works emanating from the foremost French
researchers from Sciences Po, Paris. It also welcomes works by academics
who share our methods and philosophy of research in an open-minded
perspective of what academic research in social sciences allows for and
should aim for. Sciences Po was founded in 1872 and is today one of the
most prestigious universities for teaching and research in social sciences in
France, recognized worldwide.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14411
 François Bafoil

The Politics
of Destruction
Three Contemporary Configurations of
Hallucination: USSR, Polish PiS Party, Islamic State
François Bafoil
Paris, France

Translated by Laurie Hurwitz

The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy

ISBN 978-3-030-81941-5 ISBN 978-3-030-81942-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81942-2

This book was published in French under the title Politiques de la destruction Trois figures
de l’hallucination en politique, Paris: Hermann, 2021.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or
in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic
adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or
hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © MirageC gettyimages

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Contents

1 Psychoanalysis and History: The Unconscious

and Reason 1
1 The Unconscious and Politics 3
2 The Alterities of Reason 13
2 The Matrix of the Totalitarian System: The
Hallucinated Soviet Personality 23
1 The Other of Reason: The Psychological Core 25
2 The Decisive Politics of Destruction of the Old-World:
Collectivization 37
3 Resistance and Limits of a Deadly Jouissance 46
3 The Law and Justice Party in Poland: Family
Romances, National Romances 53
1 The Construction of Images and the Revalorization
of the Myth of Polishness 57
2 The Bad and the Good: “Them” and “Us” 67
3 Tribal Nationalism: Repetition 74
4 The Personality of the Jihadist Terrorist: Atemporal
Spaces of Terror 85
1 The “Totalitarian Personality,” Continuity and Rupture 88
2 Ego-Ideal and Ideal Ego: From Childhood to Its Return
via the Other 90
3 Narcissistic Wound and a Return to Origin 94

v
vi CONTENTS

5 The Unconscious and Political Science: A Freudian

Reading of Weberian Types of Domination 109
1 Tradition 112
2 Uncertainty of Time and the Charismatic Personality 116
3 Bureaucracy and the Rational-Legal Order 120
6 Conclusion 127

Bibliography 131
Index 139
 CHAPTER 1

Psychoanalysis and History: The Unconscious

and Reason

Abstract This chapter examines three configurations of hallucination

through their similarities and differences. Similarities relate to the psycho-
analytical approach—with the notion of the unconscious at its core—of
repetition and destruction, through which I examine the processes of
construction of a hallucinated surreality in each case. Repetition is felt
as a vital constraint and as such is akin to a compulsion founded on
inexhaustible anxiety (because constantly fueled). This anxiety is trig-
gered by the constant threat of disappearance and death by a malevolent
force, of enemies obsessed with annihilation. Differences relate to History
perceived in light of the double aspect of the Western reason, when it
defines it first as the negative side of that of which reason would be the
positive, in the fullness of discourse, science and art; and as the Other of
Reason—reason being understood as “common sense” from which this
Other would be substantively different.

Keywords Psychoanalysis · Repetition · Destruction · Time and space ·

Hallucination · Unconscious · Reason · Hallucinated reality · The other ·
Common sense

By focusing on certain personality types in “totalitarian” thinking—those

from the Bolshevik regime and the Islamic State—and in a derivative of it,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
F. Bafoil, The Politics of Destruction, The Sciences Po Series in Interna-
tional Relations and Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81942-2_1
2 F. BAFOIL

the “authoritarian” thinking identified with the Polish ruling party, Law
and Justice (PiS)1 —this essay seeks to better understand that which corre-
sponds to the notion of “hallucination” in relation to politics or even, to
borrow the term Freud used in reference to dreams, “wish fulfillment.”
If perception refers to an existing external object and is its mnemonic
trace, hallucination differs from this in that it pertains to the mnemonic
trace of a lacking object to which it gives form and content by recom-
posing them. It distinguishes itself all the more in that it is attached to an
indefectible belief in its reality by those who are experiencing the halluci-
nation, and who use all the means at their disposal to impose it on others
as an inescapable reality. The dimension of this belief, and still more a
profound conviction, leads to obsession and fixation. It forces the act
of repetition and reinforces this deep conviction that the hallucination
is a clear and unavoidable reality. What separates a psychiatric approach
to hallucination from a political approach, which I explore here, is the
emphasis on violence against those in political power, intended to impose
this deep conviction on others and to prohibit any change that could
possibly lead to another lived reality.
It is this form and content that need to be analyzed, as do the polit-
ical means carried out to impose it on citizens in place of reality, either
collective or individual. To do so, I will try to understand the desire
that animates political thought and action when this desire pertains to
an obsession with purity and authorizes certain individuals to unleash a
terrifying wave of violence. What is particularly striking, of course, is this
violence seen as a sign of ancestral barbarity. But it is equally the chasm the
violence implies, that of the unbearable lack felt by the perpetrators of this
violence, a lack in which they damage themselves as if to better pull them-
selves out of the chasm. With this extreme violence, they suggest that the
lacking object at the root of their anxiety—which can be a social class they
consider rotten, an untenable distortion of religion, or even an unaccept-
able perversion of history—must be eliminated in the most radical way
possible and replaced by an idealized reality: a single and unique social
class; the originary religion; sacred history.
But purity of intention is not only seen in the goal they want to
achieve. It is also revealed by way of their compulsive need to purge
everything that may have preceded them and everything around them.

1 Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (PiS).

 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 3

Militants must embody the purity in which they project themselves, and
whose image is none other than themselves—in other words, an ego that
seeks itself and itself alone in its admired and loved ideal, trapped in self-
love, in narcissism. For these kinds of individuals, the only thing that
seems capable of alleviating the anxiety of this lack is the advent of a
future conceived as a victory over history, a history reduced to some-
thing degrading and evil. And for this reason, what they seek is imagined
either as a totally blissful future or as a return to an immaculate origin.
In both cases, a process of repetition, both psychological and practical,
inevitably imposes itself: repetition of a destructive action accomplished
without weakness, repetition of rites that sanctify action and speech, and,
lastly, repetition of origin as a new beginning, devoid of the seeds of any
possible degeneration that history might have engendered.
In this first chapter, I will specify the two theoretical dimensions
that allow us to apprehend our three configurations in terms of their
similarities and differences. The similarities relate to the psychoanalytical
approach, with the notion of the unconscious at its core, through which
we intend to understand the processes of construction of a hallucinated
surreality in each case. The differences relate to the history perceived in
light of Western reason insofar as each case is situated in relation to it and
is therefore different from the other cases. The three chapters dealing
with Soviet totalitarianism (Chapter 2), the authoritarianism of the ruling
Polish party, the Law and Justice Party, the PiS (Chapter 3), and jihadist
extremism (Chapter 4) will allow us to consider in a final development
the links between psychoanalysis and political science by returning to the
dynamics of negation, repetition, and repression specific to the uncon-
scious, and comparing them with the categories of domination identified
by Max Weber of tradition, charisma, and the legal-rational order.

1 The Unconscious and Politics

The different processes of feeling unbearable anxiety and its repression
reveal what underlies them in conflictual and perpetual tension—the
unconscious. This notion of the unconscious is central to my thinking,
because it justifies applying psychoanalytic tools to subjects traditionally
pertaining to political science. This notion of the unconscious cannot be
taken as a given, and even less as something that would “elude” total-
itarian psychology—a term I will return to and clarify later—and that
might be revealed through analyzing discourses, texts, and practices. It
4 F. BAFOIL

is therefore not comparable to lapsus linguae or an acte manqué, even

if it is understood that Freud infers the unconscious by analyzing these
phenomena.2 On the contrary, it is a question of understanding the
unconscious as the elemental structure which, like the dream, involves
the processes of selection, repression, and denial through the dynamics of
love and hate, by assigning social actors their place in the social space and
in history. In this way, policies of inclusion are based on the identification
of “friend” groups, and policies of exclusion on that of “enemy” groups.

1.1 The Construction of the Surreality

I return briefly here to the structure of dreams in order to under-
stand how Freudian concepts can be mobilized in analyzing “totalitarian
psychology” and its avatar, “authoritarian thought,” which will allow me
to compare them in the book’s conclusion with the types of political
authority identified by Max Weber.3 From the dream, which remains
the entryway par excellence to the unconscious, let us keep in mind the
two levels whose components and interactions provide a first approach
to the subject of this essay. The first is referred to as “manifest” and
the second, “latent.” “Manifest” content is exposed in its raw materi-
ality, in the way that it is directly told and listened to during narration.
“Latent” content translates desire by reshaping it in a variety of forms
that define the dreamers’ wished-for goal and the means used to attain it.
These different processes of combination are important here because they
are analogous to those of the displacement of dream content, its recon-
stitution, its caesura, and ultimately the substitution of one element for

2 “The oldest and best meaning of the word ‘unconscious’ is the descriptive one;
we call a psychical process unconscious whose existence we are obliged to assume—for
some such reason as that we infer it from its effects—but of which we know nothing.”
Sigmund Freud, “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality,” New Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis, Lecture 31, Complete Works, Vol. XXII (1932–1936) (London: Hogarth
Press, 1995), 70.
3 For this reason, this essay further develops the ideas presented in my book from 2019,
a comparative study of the work of Freud and Weber on epistemology, crowd psychology
and war, and on Judaism and antisemitism: François Bafoil, Freud et Weber. L’Hérédité,
Race, Masse et Traditions (Paris: Hermann, 2019). In contrast, here I do not compare
their two ways of thinking but rather focus on a heuristic approach to Freudian concepts
as a way of understanding specific political regimes. For this reason, in Chapter 5, I seek
in a final comparison to show how the definition of Weberian types of domination can be
enriched by referring to certain Freudian concepts.
 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 5

another. Moreover, they have their place in a configuration in which the

links of consequentiality are eliminated, temporality is absent, and spatial
distinctions are nullified. Negation of temporality and distance, thus nega-
tion of coordination and causality—such are the structuring operations
by which the unconscious acts on factual content, transforms it, denies
it and reproduces it in another form, one that conforms more closely
to the dreamers’ desires.4 For this reason, that which occurs in dreams
has much in common with a hallucination, a hallucination that is all the
stronger because dreamers believe they are omnipotent, free to manipu-
late all the components of reality as they wish and fully satisfied with their
performance. In this respect, waking up, as well as the return to reality
it implies, is always an ordeal for the person forced to interrupt the plea-
sure of remaining asleep in full omnipotence. The dreamer is once again
subject to the strict conditions of the passage of time and spatial distance,
which imply not only the awareness of others but also of the objections
they may raise, or even the impossibility of reaching one’s goal imme-
diately, without having to pass through consecutive steps in the process.
In short, becoming conscious of one’s finiteness, which is limited by the
Other. Reality, as it were.
Let me pause here to explain that these dynamics allow an under-
standing of the principal orientations that lay the foundations of “total-
itarian psychology” as analyzed here. They can be divided into three
sequences: the destruction of the frameworks of understanding, the
fantasmatization of reality into “surreality,” and the selection of individ-
uals and their assignation in the social space according to determinations
of love and hate.
The first part deals with the politics of destruction of categories of
understanding. These are categories of time and space, which are as valid
for the community as for the individual, and which, as we have known
since Kant, constitute conditions of possibility for action. For this reason,
they participate in defining the ego. Whether individual or collective, the
ego is built through the practical implementation of these categories,
because they allow it to place itself in relation to beings and things, to

4 “To sum up: exemption from mutual contradiction, primary process (mobility of
cathexes), timelessness and replacement of external by psychical reality – these are the charac-
teristics which we may expect to find in processes belonging to the system Ucs.” Sigmund
Freud, “The Unconscious,” Complete Works, Vol. XIV (1914–1916) (London: Hogarth
Press, 1995), 167.
6 F. BAFOIL

collective history and individual experience. But all regimes, totalitarian

or authoritarian—and this is my premise—begin by destroying that which
contributes to defining the ego, and thus these regimes are focused on
reformulating the frameworks and references of collective history. Author-
itarian psychology does this at best, by drawing attention to certain
heroic configurations in collective history and in textbooks and by deni-
grating all opposition forces qualified as “the enemy,” and totalitarian
psychology does this at worst, by eliminating all objectors stigmatized as
“traitors” and condemned to death. This recasting of collective references
obliges individuals to pledge allegiance to a new representation of shared
history; for otherwise they run the risk of suffering the same fate of those
denounced as the “others,” the “them,” all those who are destined to
die. These “others” take on the identity of the hated Other, determined
to destroy the beloved ego. This first step toward destruction seems to
correspond to that which René Kaës referred to when he spoke of “catas-
trophe” as the moment when the structuring components of social space
break down—the moment when the sublimation of drives, taboos, and
collective representations no longer fulfill their regulatory and protec-
tive function.5 This leaves the way open to violence unleashed across the
board. A “catastrophe” that is not representable, because the dynamic of
violence that strikes it is so significant. A catastrophe that opens, to refer
to the terminology used by César and Sara Botella, onto trauma: trauma
that “should be understood as a negativity—that is to say, a violent and
abrupt absence of topographies and psychical dynamics, the rupture of
psychic coherence and the collapse of primary and secondary processes.6 ”
From this first process, which destroys the frameworks of thought and
action, there results a substitution of surreality for lived experience. In the
case of totalitarianism, this surreality aspires to reality in its entirety, and
in the case of authoritarianism, it is equivalent to a fantastical represen-
tation of history, one that legitimizes the action taken in reference to it.
This is accompanied by a dream vision of social unity, as well as a process

5 René Kaës, “Ruptures catastrophiques et travail de la mémoire,” in J. Puget, ed.,

Violence d’État et psychanalyse (Paris: Dunod, 1985), 169–204.
6 César Botella and Sara Botella presented their work on trauma in a conference held by
the Société psychanalytique de Paris at UNESCO, January 14–15, 1989. See César Botella
and Sara Botella, “The hallucinatory,” in The Work of Psychic Figurability, Mental States
Without Representation, translated by A. Weller (Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge,
The New Library of Psychoanalysis, 2005), 114.
 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 7

of denial that leads to selecting social groups or historical representations

that deserve to be accepted or, conversely, must be rejected. As mentioned
above, confusion and the combination of the different “components”
of this representation, as well as their selection and their recomposition,
constitute the basis for the functioning of the dream. This process claims
to tell the truth about past history in order to better denounce that which
resembles a lie, to make sure its own vision of history is accepted. As such,
it proceeds by total or partial negation, by bringing together facts that are
very distant in time or space, by disavowing consequences or by concate-
nating data that are disconnected from one another. By denying alterity
or creating artificial proximities, these policies all pursue the same goal:
to achieve a unique vision of their action or a specific, exclusive form of
domination. This operation is based on the distinction between “good”
and “bad” members of society, in other words between those who should
be saved because they correspond to what is “acceptable”—the group of
friends and allies—as opposed to those who must be eliminated, excluded,
or even disposed of—the enemy group, “unacceptable.”
First introduced with the destruction of categories of collective time
and space, then pursued with the substitution and imposition of surreality,
the totalitarian (or authoritarian) process leads ultimately to social distinc-
tions that divide the “us” identical to the ego from the “them” identified
with the other. The resulting process of symbolization articulates what is
acceptable in the social sphere and obliterates what is not, condemning
it to nonexistence. All of this is bolstered by the development of a vast
panoply of language overflowing with terms that are meant to be as close
as possible to the love of their brothers and those who are chosen, or
that are meant to be heard as a logorrhea of hate in order to belittle
the other to the lowest level of life—the germ, the cockroach, waste.
Such a dynamic thus establishes a regime of exceptionality. What is excep-
tional deserves to be kept or, in other words, absorbed; conversely, what
is insignificant must be discarded or ejected. The action proceeds from
the same mechanism as the unconscious when it chooses what deserves
to be recognized and what should be forever eliminated, relegated to the
non-conscious. Repression is a fundamental aspect of my argument, as is
the “negation-repetition” that accompanies it.
8 F. BAFOIL

1.2 Negation and Repetition

Freud interprets repression as a defense mechanism that counters an expe-
rience one feels is inadmissible—an unacceptable thought, an unbearable
sensation or image—and underlying it, a shameful desire. Many psycho-
analysts have explored the notion of primary defense mechanisms7 to
indicate that the subsequent mechanisms of denial (die Verleugnung ),
foreclosure (die Verwerfung), and negation (die Verneinung ) stem from
this notion. These are many facets of “the work of the negative,” under-
stood as a drive that tirelessly seeks to destroy whatever stands in its way.
Denial, as shown, makes it possible to select what is admissible and what is
not. Foreclosure defines the space for thought and “good” action, that is,
according to norms, while negation consists of refusing factual evidence
in order to replace it with another reality, one that conforms more closely
to desire.
As such, any reflection on social and political pathology seems from
the outset to be connected to lack, and therefore to the negative. The
symbolic of repetition reinforces this idea, which can be understood in
relation to the feeling of intolerable lack that is translated into anxiety.
This lack leads to a sought-after purity in totalitarian action and its
opposite, vice or impurity, which its perpetrators believe have taken over
history. For this reason, the lacking object leads to repression. But the
pressure it exerts is reflected in the displacement of the psychological
weight that, disguised and reformulated in a way that is acceptable to the
individual—the symptom—can then return, prettified and recast. In this
way, it ensures its control over the ego.8 In politics, this is the reference
object, promoted to the extreme. It could be the sovereign nation, the
class that is finally dominant, or even pure origin free of all corruption.
Repetition is thus presentification by way of displacement of the lacking
object, thus conquering the fatal absence. Children, as Freud explains,
respond to this when, in order to dominate the overwhelming anxiety that
arises from the lack resulting from the separation with the mother, they

7 André Green, The Work of the Negative, translation A. Weller (London: Free Associ-
ation Books, 1999), in particular his chapter “Traces of the Negative in Freud’s Work.”
50–81.
8 Freud makes this clear in his analysis of the obsessional neurosis, which he relates
to repetition compulsion in order to compare it to religious ceremonial. Sigmund Freud,
“Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices,” Complete Works, Vol. IX (1906–1908) (London:
Hogarth Press, 1995), 135–146.
 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 9

try to find a substitute for her and make it appear and disappear at will.9
By reactivating the separation, the child can resurrect and dominate this
feeling of anxiety. The rage and determination to destroy it thus ensures
control over it in a double dynamic of “making something appear and
disappear” in order to legitimize the power of disposing of it on demand
and of consolidating this representation—a more reassuring alternative
reality.10 What is being played out in this dynamic is the anxiety that
takes hold of the subject faced with lack, which can be overcome if one
provides an indirect representation of it that can be manipulated at will,
summoned, questioned, tortured, or even saved for no apparent reason
other than the pleasure derived from this gesture, freed of all respon-
sibility.11 Freud understands this dynamic at the very heart of a living
being, like the quasi-mechanical repetition of movement, something like
a repressed pulse.
This idea relates to Hannah Arendt’s valuable insight into the struc-
turing force of totalitarianism as “the central unchanging ideological
fiction of the movement.12 ” According to this German philosopher, this
can be read as a movement characteristic, under imperialism, of the
destruction of the nation-state. Under Bolshevik totalitarianism, this was
expressed by “movements” that removed themselves from the “masses”
and reconfigured them according to their desires, sometimes without ever
coagulating into “parties.” The movement specific to totalitarianism is
that of momentum: momentum that never stops, that incessantly fuels
the enthusiasm of individuals and crowds; that of power, of the strong
versus the weak against all obstacles rising up against them; and finally,
that of repetition in opposition to everything that is fixed. The totalitarian
movement therefore stands against tradition, and against learned rites
that strengthen acquired characteristics. In this, totalitarianism is similar

9 Sigmund Freud, 1920, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” Complete Works, Vol. XVIII
(1920–1922) (London: Hogarth Press, 1995).
10 Jacques Sédat, “La pulsion de mort: familière étrangeté?” Figures de la psychanalyse,
no. 39 (2020), 47–57. See Revue française de Psychanalyse, Vol. 84.
11 Writing about games that children incessantly repeat, Freud explains that children
“abreact the strength of the impression and so to speak make themselves masters of the
situation.” Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” op. cit., 17.
12 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979), 382.
10 F. BAFOIL

to the physics of unstoppable force that gathers energy from within and
transforms it into a continuous dynamic.
These remarks lead me to review the types of domination (Herrschaft )
outlined by Max Weber, and in particular charismatic authority, a regime
of domination that refers, on the one hand, to the magical qualities with
which an individual—often a prophet or an envoy of God—is graced, and
on the other hand, to the process of emotional “communitization” (die
emotionale Vergemeinschaftung ) inevitably linked to it. This regime encap-
sulates all those who follow these authority figures and who, by believing
in the leader and the benefits they derive from these leaders, legitimize
their magical quality. In this respect, material benefits are just as important
as spiritual ones in consolidating their charisma. If the followers receive
no material benefits, the risk is great that they begin to doubt the exis-
tence of this exceptional quality, and hence the legitimacy of its bearer.
The risk, in fact, that in the end, they will be revealed for what they
actually are—liars, dissimulators. With the charismatic leader, the tempo-
rality is that of an instant of unspecified length, that uncertain moment
condemned to repeat itself endlessly in order not to fall into the regu-
larity, which in his eyes would be deadly, of the other two other types of
authority: that of tradition with its baseless origins, and that invested in
the legality of rules and behavior. Yet in their endlessly repeated regu-
larity, these other two authority figures are reassuring, for two radical
and opposite reasons however: the first because this regularity hinges
on unconditional love for the father, and the second because it relies
on constantly deepening knowledge. In contrast, charisma is specific to
periods of generalized anxiety, linked to collective fear in uncertain times,
in times which await miracles.
Regarding notions of “the negative” and the mechanism of “repeti-
tion,” one can cite the other Freudian concept that these three empirical
cases appear to confirm over and again: the death drive. However, unlike
his theory of the unconscious, which here provides the tools needed for
understanding the processes of eliminating categories of understanding
and of replacing reality with hallucination, as well as the mechanisms
of denial, acceptance and annihilation, the death-drive theory does not
appear to be very operational as such.13 At first glance, this might seem

13 Freud hesitates regarding the question of the value, hypothetical or not, of the death
drive in connection with biology (i.e., with the living, as an accident in the permanent
cycle of death) or in connection with psychology (as an instinctual dimension specific to
 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 11

surprising, since the notion of destruction seems to be intimately linked

to it in Freudian thought as reformulated by its author as of 1920. By
temporarily putting aside the death-drive theory, I am actually seeking
to eliminate any essentialization of a drive that would weigh on the living
like a fatality, and in the situation of these case studies, that would overde-
termine them. The death drive is not the essence of political action, and
totalitarian psychology, in the way I am looking at it, is not eternal. On
the contrary, it occurs in specific historical contexts, in Russia during the
First World War, in the Middle East torn apart by foreign powers with
regard to the Islamic State, and finally in Poland after 2015. For this
reason, I am focusing on institutions and public action. It is therefore
mentioned here only as a supposition that reminds us of the relentless
repetition of destruction underlying political action. It is much more than
the concept of destruction that constitutes the subject of this study, a
concept that finds itself largely ignored in theories in sociology or political
science and that, in contrast, as Gérard Rabinovitch rightfully underlines,
to myriad other terms like totalitarianism.14
It is not so much then the metapsychology than Freudian psychology
that inspires my thinking here. In other words, the notion of the “death
drive” is not my specific subject, while the unconscious is considered here
the conceptual core of a set of dynamic forces specific to the desires of
love and hate that account for different social constructions—represen-
tations and discourse, social interaction, institutions, and public policies.
Put differently, it is not so much the configurations of the ego, superego,
and id that concern me (although they are intrinsic to this discussion,
as seen in the last chapter)—known as the first topic15 —that which is
connected to the structure of the psyche when it highlights the dynamic

the psychic mechanism). On the hypothetical relevance of the death drive, see Sigmund
Freud, “The Libido Theory and Narcissism” and “Psychoanalysis,” Complete Works, Vol.
XVI (1916–1917) (London: Hogarth Press, 1995); “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” op.
cit., 38–39; “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” Complete Works, Vol. XIX (1923–
1925) (London: Hogarth Press, 1995); “Why War?” Complete Works, Vol. XXII (1932–
1936), op. cit.
14 Gérard Rabinovitch, De la destructivité humaine. Fragments sur le Béhémoth (Paris:
PUF, 2002). The author adds (102) that although the social sciences do not reflect this,
the term “destructiveness” is also very limited in psychoanalytical studies, as shown by the
very infrequent mentions in various dictionaries and specialized terminologies, idem, 102.
15 On the notions of first and second topics, see Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand
Pontalis, Dictionnaire de la psychanalyse (Paris: PUF, 2007).
12 F. BAFOIL

processes of repression, anxiety, latency, and guilt, but also the structural
processes of negation of temporality, displacement of the elements of the
dream, the substitution of one element for another.
To acknowledge this is to deal with the process of construction of
collective political action by analogue means to those processes specific to
dreams, whose various stages structure the psyche and without claiming
to place it under the authority of personalities who could otherwise liken
it to ahistorical determinism. Attempting to historicize the unconscious
would thus mean pursuing a triple objective: on the one hand, seeking
to validate the accuracy of Freudian concepts in the context of concrete
political action, and thus position this way of thinking on the path opened
up by Norbert Elias and Theodor Adorno in their search to understand
manifestations of the unconscious in terms of the historical context in
which they occur, and the self-constraint that is asked of citizens16 ; and
on the other, to underline the decisive importance of the institutions
put in place by totalitarian authorities, to the extent that they embody
the dynamics of the love and hate that established them, given that they
contribute to making via the conflicts that traverse them; and finally for
this reason to insist on the primordial dimension of symbolic and mate-
rial remunerations and sanctions that these institutions issue, and without
which there would be no “totalitarian” figures and culture; in this case
the economic and social policies destined for certain groups that for this
same reason adhere to a totalitarian thinking, to the exclusion of those
deprived others. To think of destruction is to think of the interactions
that are played out between the ego affected by lack and social institu-
tions when they are seized in light of the anxiety that gives rise to them
and that, seen together, define “totalitarian psychology.”
In addition to the similarities of our three cases, reflected in the use
of Freudian categories, there are differences that can be identified in the
relationship that each of our cases has with Western Reason and with the
notion of “common sense.” It is the question of the alterity of Reason that

16 Norbert Elias, “Freud’s Concept of Society and Beyond It,” published in French
in Au-delà de Freud. Sociologie, Psychologie, Psychanalyse (Paris: La Découverte, 2010);
Theodor W. Adorno, Le Conflit des Sociologies (Paris: Payot, 2016). In English, see, for
instance, The Adorno Reader, ed. B. O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) as well as
the volumes of Adorno’s writings published in English by Polity, including Philosophical
Elements of a Theory of Society (Oxford: Polity Press, 2019). In the same vein, see also
Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of
the American Agitator (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949).
 1 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORY … 13

is raised with the approach to totalitarianism. Indeed, while psychoanal-

ysis helps us understand the similarities of our three case studies thanks
to the concepts of the unconscious and of surreality, History can help
us understand the differences between them thanks to the concept of
Western reason.

2 The Alterities of Reason

When approached from the perspective of the links it has maintained with
Western reason, direct heir to the Enlightenment, madness can be exam-
ined from a dual contrasting perspective—as the negative side of that of
which reason would be the positive, in the fullness of discourse, science
and art; or as the Other of Reason, with reason being understood as
“common sense” from which this Other would be substantively different.
By “common sense,” I am referring here to the collectively shared expe-
rience that generates the social norms accepted in a given society. These
norms are deployed in the space of social exchanges and in the tempo-
rality of a historical community and of tradition, whether the community
is national or international. The essence of this alterity is understood in
the example of the USSR, which is seen—and this is the central assump-
tion here—as the matrix of totalitarian psychology. At one extreme is the
PiS, the direct heir of that pivotal figure, albeit a watered-down version. It
has the same instinctual force, but without all the means for effectuation,
violence or criminal intent. In this respect, the authoritarianism seen in
the Polish party is an unfinished totalitarianism. At the other end of the
spectrum, the Islamic State is creating a situation that no longer has any
connection whatsoever to common sense, having severed, in its destruc-
tive madness, its relationship with anyone in the international community.
Derived directly from the matrix of totalitarian psychology, it completes
its trajectory, going so far as to destroy it through self-immolation carried
out in the name of God.
So common sense is understood here as the collective experience of
social norms. On the one hand, then, madness could refer to forms of
derangement, which would clearly reveal the irrationality of its subject and
a logic of being closed in on oneself, yet it would nonetheless maintain
close ties to reason, to the extent that the mad person would be the Other
of Reason, its corresponding and obverse negative. On the other hand,
this could also mean a rupture with no hope of return for those isolated
in a delirium whose coherence and systematicity of propositions convince
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
and all my dahlia roots, and the black kitten. The kitten’s name is
Bad Boy because he jumps on the table when no one is looking. And
you must be sure to dig the dahlias up before frost.’
“Just then Mrs. Orbison’s voice floated out through the open
sitting-room window.
“‘It all depends on the sermon he preaches tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If
they don’t like it, a letter goes to the Presiding Elder saying we will
not tolerate Brother Bard another year and that in case he is sent
back against our wishes we will not pay him anything.’
“I looked quickly at Betty to see if she had heard, and I knew by
the flush on her cheeks that she had. I put my arm through hers and
we walked slowly toward the front gate. It was then I made my wish.
I looked at Mrs. Orbison’s white horse turned out to graze in the
orchard across the road and at Betty’s red head, and I said to
myself, ‘I wish for Betty not to move away.’ Out loud I said to Betty,
‘Can’t you tell your grandpa to preach a sermon they’ll like, Betty, so
you won’t have to go away?’
“‘But how would he know what they’d like?’ she asked in a puzzled
tone.
“‘Oh, just something pleasant,’ I answered cheerfully, ‘something
nice and pleasant.’
“‘I’ll tell him what Mrs. Orbison said,’ she promised before she
went home, ‘and he can do what he thinks best.’
“We stopped at the parsonage the next morning to take Betty into
the surrey with us because her grandma seldom went to meeting,
not being very strong. I could hardly wait till Betty and I got around a
corner of the church to ourselves.
“‘What did your grandpa say?’ I asked eagerly.
“‘He said he’d do his duty as he saw it, and grandma said he
stayed up all night. She crept downstairs three times to beg him to
come to bed.’
“This did not sound very encouraging, but when I heard the text I
breathed a sigh of relief. It was, ‘Now if Timotheus come, see that he
may be with you without fear, for he worketh the work of the Lord as I
also do.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded like a safe text,
and I became so interested in watching a robin hopping on the
window sill that I did not notice what Preacher Bard was saying until I
felt Betty straighten up and clutch my hand.
“I looked around to see what had happened, and I knew in a
minute that he had not preached a sermon to please them.
Amazement, indignation, surprise, showed plainly in the upturned
faces. I won’t try to tell you what was in that sermon, only this—that,
in the hope of making things easier for his successor, Reverend Bard
had undertaken in a kindly way to open the eyes of the Mt. Zion
people to some of their faults. They had found fault with all the
preachers. Now he pointed out a few of their own shortcomings, and
they didn’t like it—no, indeed, not a bit.
“When it was over, the congregation poured out of the church,
filled the little yard, and overflowed into the graveyard beyond. No
one offered to leave. They stood around in groups—whispering,
shaking their heads gravely, pressing their lips in grim lines.
“As soon as the preacher left for his afternoon appointment the
storm broke. No one paid any attention to Betty as she stood at the
horseblock with me waiting for Father to come round with the surrey.
Everybody talked at once.
“‘He doesn’t preach the straight gospel—he tells too many tales.’
“‘He doesn’t visit enough.’
“‘He favors pouring, when we’ve always stood for immersion.’
“These remarks and many others Betty and I heard as we waited
there for Father. Betty must have stood it just as long as she possibly
could. Then suddenly she jerked away from me and climbed to the
horseblock. I can see her now—her red hair flying in the breeze, her
eyes shining, her cheeks flushed.
“‘My grandfather’s the best man in the world,’ she cried, and
stamped her foot angrily. ‘He’s the best man in the world, I tell you. I
don’t care what you say, he’s the best man in the world,’ and she
crumpled down in a little sobbing heap.
 The congregation stood around in groups—whispering and shaking
their heads gravely

“Father came up then and, putting an arm around Betty, he said,

‘Let us pray,’ and everybody bowed his head and Father prayed. He
prayed a long time, and at the last there were lots of ‘Amens’ and
‘Praise the Lords’ just as in big meeting.
“The second Father finished, an old man stepped out in front and
said in a halting way that he would like every one to know that when
his cow died in the winter Preacher Bard had bought him another.
That started things. A young man said the preacher had sat up with
him every other night for six weeks when he had typhoid fever. A boy
said the preacher had bought him school books, and the Widow
Spears said he had given her twenty dollars when her house burned.
An old lady told how he read one afternoon a week to her husband
who was blind, and so on and on and on. Everybody wanted to tell
something good about Preacher Bard.
“Before the meeting broke up a big donation party was planned for
Monday night, and Mother got Mrs. Bard to let Betty come home with
us so she wouldn’t give it away. Monday was a busy day. While the
women baked and cooked for the party, the men raised money to put
a new roof on the parsonage, to buy a suit of clothes for Brother
Bard, a black silk dress for Mrs. Bard, so stiff it would stand alone,
and a blue delaine for Betty.
“How we surprised the Bards that night when we all went in, and
what a good time we had! But the best part was when Deacon
Orbison, who had been opposed to the preacher from the first, got
up on a chair and made a speech. He said it seemed to him Redding
circuit could not afford to lose a man like Reverend Bard, that his
salary and benevolences had been made up in full, and that a letter
would be sent the Presiding Elder asking that he be returned for
another year. He was returned, and Betty and I sat together at
school that winter, so you see I got my wish.
“Well, well, if it isn’t bedtime for three little children I know. Pass
the apples, Bobby, please, and next time I’ll tell you—well, I just don’t
know what I shall tell you next time, but I’ll have something for you.”
 JOE’S INFARE
“I think tonight I’ll tell you about my brother Joe’s infare,” said
Grandma one evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink had come to
her room for their usual good-night story. “But first,” she went on,
before the children had time to ask any questions, “I’d better tell you
what an infare was. It was a sort of wedding reception which took
place at the bridegroom’s home, usually the day after the wedding. It
was the faring or going of the bride into her husband’s home and
was celebrated with great rejoicing and a big feast.
“Joe had married Sally Garvin, who lived four miles from us by the
road but only two miles through the fields. They had been married
the day before, and we were to have the infare.
“Mother and the girls and Nanny Dodds had baked and cooked for
a solid week. And before that they had cleaned the house from top to
bottom, and we had mowed and raked and swept the big front yard
and the orchard across the road and the pasture lot by the house.
Now the great day had arrived.
“Stanley had gone in our surrey to drive the bridal couple home,
and Truman and the girls had ridden horseback to meet them.
Charlie had brought Hunter, Stanley’s colt, down to the barn lot so he
could go with them. But Mother was afraid to have him ride the colt,
not knowing that he practiced riding him every day in the pasture
field.
“From my lookout on the rail of the front portico I saw the first of
the guests come over the top of two-mile hill. There was a number of
young men and girls on horseback, followed by our surrey with
Stanley driving. On the back seat I knew the bride and groom sat.
“I waited for nothing more. I jumped down and rushed off to the
kitchen to tell Mother. Mother gave Nanny some instructions about
the dinner, slipped off the big gingham apron that covered her gray
silk dress, patted her hair before the mirror in the hall, and, taking
Father’s arm, went down the path between the rows of bachelor’s
buttons, foxglove, Canterbury bells, and ribbon grass to welcome her
first daughter-in-law.
“When Sally and Joe had left Sally’s home, a number of friends
and relatives had started with them. These had been added to all
along the way by other friends, so that there was quite a crowd of
folks when they reached our house, besides lots of people who had
already come.
“As soon as Mother and Father had greeted Sally, Belle and Aggie
hurried her upstairs to the spare chamber to put on her wedding
dress. Sally was little, with pink cheeks, and brown curls which she
wore caught at the top of her head and hanging down her back very
much as the little girls wear their hair now, only the young ladies of
that day wore a high-backed comb instead of a ribbon. She wore a
new gray alpaca trimmed in narrow silk fluting, very pretty, but
nothing like what the wedding dress would be. The wedding dress
had been made in Clayville, and Belle and Aggie and everybody else
were eager to see it.
“Joe brought up the telescope which held Sally’s things and went
back downstairs. The girls were going to help Sally dress, and I kept
as much out of sight as possible so I could see and yet not be seen.
“‘Open it up, Aggie, please,’ said Sally, pointing to the telescope,
‘and lay my dress on the bed. I do hope it’s not wrinkled.’
“Aggie lifted the telescope from the floor to a chair.
“‘My goodness, but it’s heavy!’ she cried. ‘What in the world is in it,
Sally?’
“Sally turned from the mirror.
“‘Heavy?’ she said surprised. ‘Why, there’s hardly anything in it. I
packed it myself. I wanted to be sure my dress wouldn’t be wrinkled,
so I just put in the dress and a few other things to do until tomorrow.’
“Aggie rapidly unbuckled the straps and lifted up the lid. Sally gave
a smothered cry and caught Belle’s arm.
 “‘Somebody has made a mistake,’ she gasped. ‘It is the wrong
telescope!’ and she threw herself across the bed and burst into
tears.
“The telescope was packed tight full with towels, pillow slips,
tablecloths, and sheets and was to have been brought over the next
day with the rest of Sally’s things. In the excitement of leaving, some
one had carried it down and placed it in the surrey instead of the one
containing the wedding dress.
“‘You look awfully sweet in this little gray dress, Sally,’ Aggie tried
to console her. But it was no use, for Sally knew quite well that
waiting downstairs were girls in dresses that looked much more
bridelike than the gray alpaca. To be outshone at one’s own infare—
well, it was no wonder she cried!
“Belle suggested that Stanley or Truman go back for the wedding
dress, but Sally objected to this. She said people would laugh at her
and never forget that she had gone to her infare and left her wedding
dress at home.
“Suddenly a thought came to me. Hunter was still in the barn lot.
Charlie could ride him, and he went like a streak. It was only two
miles through the fields to Sally’s home. I never stopped to think that
Mother would be frightened if she knew Charlie was on Hunter, or
that Father would probably forbid it, or that Charlie might ruin his
new Sunday suit. I slipped out of the room and went in search of
Charlie. I found him out front pitching horseshoes, and in no time at
all he was off to Sally’s home without a soul knowing about it. Then I
went upstairs to tell the girls what I had done.
“They were not very hopeful. It didn’t seem possible that Sally
could stay upstairs till Charlie got back with the dress, but she said
she would wait a little while anyway. She got up and bathed her face,
and Belle and Aggie went down to entertain the guests. Belle started
several games, such as ‘Strip-the-Willow’ and ‘Copenhagen,’ and
Aggie played the piano.
“I was everywhere—in the kitchen begging Nanny to hold the
dinner back as long as she could (I had let her into the secret), on
the hill behind the house watching for Charlie, and in the spare
chamber trying to cheer Sally up, for at the end of an hour there was
no sign of Charlie.
“What could have happened? He had said he could make it in less
than an hour. He had been gone an hour and twenty minutes!
People were wondering why Sally did not appear. They had lost
interest in the games and were dropping out and sauntering toward
the house. Aggie had played everything she knew over and over.
Belle had run up to tell Sally she would have to put on the gray dress
and come right down, but Sally had coaxed for five minutes more.
Belle went back and started the folks singing ‘The Star-Spangled
Banner.’ The five minutes were up and Sally was putting on the gray
alpaca dress when Charlie came.
“The people who had begun to wonder what was keeping the bride
forgot about it when Sally came down and stood with Joe to receive
their good wishes and congratulations. Her dress was heavy cream-
colored silk with tiny pink rosebuds scattered all over it, and the full
skirt was ruffled clear to the waist. The round neck and elbow
sleeves were finished with filmy white ruching, and she wore white
satin slippers. With her pink cheeks and shiny brown curls I thought
she was the very prettiest bride any one ever saw.
“When they had gone into the dining room, where Annie Brierly
and some other little girls were waving peach switches over the
tables to keep the flies and bees away and Sally was saying who
should sit at the bride’s table, Charlie told me what had kept him. He
had found the Garvins’ house locked up and had had to climb in a
window to get the telescope. The dog had seen him as he had
gotten in and wouldn’t let him come out until Charlie had fed him and
made friends with him.
“Then some one called us and said that Sally wanted Charlie and
me to sit at the bride’s table. No one could have been more
surprised than we were, for we hadn’t expected to eat till the third
table at the very soonest, and here we were invited to sit at the
bride’s table and have our pick of the choicest food!
“There! I hear Mother calling. Good night, good night, good night.”
 PUMPKIN SEED
“Well, well,” said Grandma one evening when Bobby and Alice
and Pink asked for a story. “I wonder if I can think of anything
tonight.” She found her knitting and went on in a puzzled tone. “I
thought of something today to tell you about. Let me see, what was
it? Oh, I remember now. It was the pumpkin pie at dinner that set me
thinking about the pumpkin seed that Father gave brother Charlie
and me to plant.”
“It was in the spring. The fish were biting fine, and one afternoon
Charlie and I were all ready to go down to the deep hole under the
willows to fish. Charlie had cut new poles and hunted up hooks and
lines, and I had packed a lunch, for you do get awfully hungry sitting
on the creek bank all afternoon. We were out behind the barn
digging bait when Father came around the corner and saw us.
“‘I’ve just been looking for you children,’ he said. ‘I want you to
take these pumpkin seeds down to the cornfield in the bottom and
plant them.’ Then, seeing our fishing tackle, he added, ‘It won’t take
long, and when you finish you may go fishing.’
“Of course Charlie and I were disappointed. We hadn’t been
fishing that year yet. It had been a late spring, with lots of rain, and
on the bright days there had been so many things that we could do
around the house and garden that we couldn’t be spared to go
fishing. And now, with everything all ready, to give it up even for an
hour or two was a trial.
“We started for the cornfield, Charlie carrying the poles and the
can of bait and I the lunch and the paper sack of pumpkin seed. The
pumpkins we were to plant were to be used to feed the stock—cow
pumpkins they were called, and they were big and coarse-grained
and not good for pies.
 “Well, Charlie and I started down at the lower end of the field and
we planted a few seeds. But there was such a lot of the seed and the
field was so big and the lure of the creek with the shade under the
willows and the fish biting was so great that we could think of nothing
else. We stopped to examine our bait to see if the worms were still
living. When we went back to work Charlie wondered what was the
use of planting so many old pumpkins, anyhow, when Father had
already planted as many as usual in the upper cornfield.
“‘We might plant a whole lot of seed at once,’ he said, ‘but still it
would take us a long time.’
“‘I know what to do!’ I cried, ‘Let’s hide the sack of seed in this old
stump and come back tomorrow and plant them.’ After a few half-
hearted protests from Charlie, this was what we did. We buried the
sack of seed in an old, rotten stump, covered it deep with the soft,
rich loam, and away we went to the creek to fish.
“Charlie baited both our hooks with the fishworms, and we would
spit on our bait each time for luck. The charm must have worked, for
when it was time to go home we had caught a nice lot of sunfish,
tobacco boxes, silversides, and suckers. Truman cleaned them for
us, and Mother dipped them in corn meal and fried them a golden
brown. We had them for supper, and every one said how good they
were and no one thought to ask us anything about the pumpkin
seeds.
“I thought about them that night after I had gone to bed and
wished that we had stayed and planted them as Father had told us
to. But then Charlie and I would go down first thing in the morning,
dig the sack out of the stump, plant the seeds, and everything would
be all right.
“But it began to rain in the night, and it rained all the next day. The
day after, it was too wet, and the day after that Charlie was busy.
Then it rained again, and after a while I forgot all about the pumpkin
seeds. It was several weeks before I thought of them again. You
couldn’t guess what made me think of them then, so I will tell you.
 “When we went to meeting on Sundays, Charlie and I always tried
to remember the text of the sermon to say when we got home, for
Mother was almost sure to ask us what it was. One Sunday I was
saying it over and over to myself so that I could remember it, when
suddenly the meaning of it came to me and I was surprised to find
that it had something to do with me. The text was ‘Be sure your sin
will find you out,’ and in a flash I knew it meant that if you did
anything wrong you couldn’t keep people from knowing about it.
Then I thought of the buried pumpkin seed which Charlie and I had
meant to go back and plant.
“Father had never said a word about the pumpkins not coming up,
though he must surely have noticed it long before this. Perhaps he
thought the seed had been bad, but still it was queer he had never
mentioned it.
“That night I couldn’t sleep for thinking how wrong it had been for
Charlie and me to deceive Father about the pumpkin seed. Even the
fact that we had meant to go back and plant them didn’t make me
feel any less guilty. When I did fall asleep, I dreamed that the room
was full of pumpkins with ugly grinning faces like jack-o’-lanterns.
They laughed and mocked at me and pressed closer and closer until
I wakened with a frightened cry, and when Mother asked me what
had scared me I couldn’t tell her.
“In the morning I talked it over with Charlie. We agreed to go to
Father immediately and tell him that we had not planted the pumpkin
seeds.
 I dreamed the room was full of pumpkins with ugly grinning faces

“But Father had gone to Clayville on business for a couple of days.

When he came back, before we had a chance to see him alone he
told us at dinner before all the others that the pumpkin crop in the
bottom cornfield was to be Charlie’s and mine. He said that we could
keep as many as we wanted to for jack-o’-lanterns on Hallowe’en
and he would pay us ten cents apiece for all the rest. Think of that!
Ten cents apiece for all the pumpkins we raised, and we knew that
there wouldn’t be any pumpkins! I looked across the table at Charlie,
and his face was very red. I couldn’t say a word, but when Father left
the table we both followed him and told him all about the pumpkin
seeds, and how the text had started us thinking, and everything.
Father listened without a word till we had finished. Then much to our
surprise he said, ‘I’ve known for a good while what you did with the
pumpkin seed. When I saw the number of fish you caught that
afternoon, I wondered how you had planted the pumpkin seed so
quickly. I had told Mother they were to belong to you two to do with
as you pleased, but I did not intend to tell you until later. Then when I
found out that you had not planted the seeds I waited for you to
come to me. I believe you have learned a lesson from this
experience which you will not forget. Come along with me. I want to
show you something.’
“Wonderingly, without a word, we followed Father to the cornfield
and straight to where the old rotten stump in the lower end of the
field had been. But when we got there we could not see the stump,
for coming out of it and all over it and completely covering it, were
myriads of pumpkin vines—not big strong vines like the ones that
grew in the fields, but thin, sickly vines crowding each other for
space.
“The soil in the stump had been so rich and light that, though the
sack of seeds had been deeply covered, when soaked with rain the
seeds had sprouted and forced their way through the sack and up to
the light and air. The vines told Father where the pumpkin seeds
were as plainly as if they could have spoken.
“And now, good night, my dears, and don’t forget to say your
prayers, and I’ll try to think up a good story for next time.”
 A SCHOOL FOR SISTER BELLE
“It was during the third year of the war that sister Belle got her
certificate to teach. Our school had been closed for a year, first
because there were no teachers, all the young men having enlisted,
and secondly because there was no money to pay a teacher. The
few schools in the county had been given out before Belle got her
certificate. She was awfully disappointed, for she wanted to go to the
academy in the spring and she didn’t think Father could spare the
money to send her, times being so hard.
“But since she couldn’t get a school she would make the best of it.
She would help Aggie and Truman and Charlie and me at home, and
she promised to teach the Brierly children, too. Then the Orbisons
wanted to come, and to save Mother the fuss and dirt so many
children would make in the house, Belle said she would hold school
in the schoolhouse and let any one attend who wanted to.
“‘It will give me experience, anyway,’ she said, ‘and dear knows
the children need some one to teach them!’
“‘Why don’t you let them pay you?’ Aggie suggested. ‘A dollar
apiece a month for each pupil wouldn’t be a bit too much.’
“But Belle said some of them couldn’t pay and they were the ones
who needed schooling the most. And the ones who could pay
probably wouldn’t, because the county should pay for a teacher.
“So one Saturday in October, armed with brooms and buckets,
window cloths and scrubbing brushes and a can of soft soap, we set
out to clean the schoolhouse. We scrubbed the floor and the desks
and polished the stove and cleaned the windows, and on the next
Monday, the date set for the opening of all the schools in the district,
sister Belle took her place at the teacher’s old desk.
“It wasn’t a very different opening from the one she had planned
and looked forward to so eagerly. The only difference was that there
would be no payment for Belle at the end of the term.
“The last pupil to start in was Joe Slater. He was a tall, strong boy
of seventeen, but was not considered very bright. He was a fine
hand to work, though, and from ploughing time in the spring until the
corn husking was over in the fall, he was always busy. During the
winter months he did odd jobs and went to school, but he had never
got beyond the first-reader class. Because he had nothing to do he
had always been more or less troublesome in school, and the very
first day he came he threw paper wads and whispered and teased
the younger children.
“Belle found that he knew the first reader ‘by heart.’ More to
encourage Joe than for any other reason, she promoted him to the
second reader. It was hard to tell whether pupil or teacher was the
most astonished to find that Joe was actually learning to read. Belle
helped him before and after school, and Joe became a model pupil
and refused to do any work that would make him miss a day of
school. He always came early in the morning and had the fire going
and wood enough in for all day by the time Belle got there.
“So Belle was surprised to find Joe’s seat empty one snowy
morning in December. His sister Nancy said he had gone to the
railroad in a sled to get some freight for Mr. Grove. They lived on Mr.
Grove’s place, and Joe could not well refuse to do this for him.
Nancy did say, though, that Joe had wanted to wait until Saturday,
but Mr. Grove was afraid the sledding snow would go off before that
time. So Joe had started long before daylight, hoping to get back to
school in time for the afternoon session.
 On the steps a big man was stamping his feet and shaking the
snow from a fur-collared great-coat

“About half-past eleven there was a loud knock on the door. It was
snowing and blowing, and we all turned around to look when Belle
went to open the door. On the steps a big man in a fur cap was
stamping his feet and shaking the snow from a fur-collared great-
coat. Belle said afterward that she knew him instantly—it was the
new county superintendent—but she couldn’t imagine why he had
come. She had seen him at institute in Clayville, but none of us
children had ever seen him before.
“Belle soon found from his talk that he thought he was in the
Cherry Flat school. When she told him where he was and the
peculiar circumstances of our school, he was very much surprised.
“‘Why, I can’t understand it at all,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the
station agent this morning, asking how to get to Cherry Flat school,
and a boy who was warming himself at the stove spoke up and
offered to take me there. He was on a sled and of course I jumped at
the chance. He let me out at the forks of the road, and here I am,
three miles from the Cherry Flat school, you say.’
“‘I bet it was Joe,’ Betty Bard whispered to me.
 “Now that the superintendent was there and couldn’t get away until
the storm let up, he made a speech. Then he listened to our
recitations and asked Belle a great many questions, such as how
many pupils she had, where they lived, and whether she received
any pay at all for teaching. She told him about her certificate and her
failure to get a school, and he wrote it all down in a little notebook.
“The storm grew worse and worse. The wind whistled around the
schoolhouse and rattled the windows, and the falling snow looked
like a thick white blanket.
“Belle asked us to share our dinners with the superintendent, and
we did. He sat on one of the desks and told us stories while he ate
everything we gave him—bread and apple butter, hard-boiled eggs,
ham sandwiches, pickles, doughnuts, mince and apple pies, and cup
cakes. When he left we were all good friends and we filled his
pockets with apples. He said he would eat them as he walked along
to Cherry Flat school, but he didn’t have to walk. Truman took him in
our sled, and we all stood in the door and waved until he was out of
sight.
“No one could get Joe to say a word about the superintendent’s
visit, but everybody thought he had brought him there on purpose,
hoping in this way to help Belle. He was a great deal smarter than
people gave him credit for, and Belle had helped him and he wanted
to do something for her.
“But if sister Belle nourished any secret hopes that the unexpected
visit would help her in any way, she gave them up as the weeks went
by and she heard nothing from the superintendent.
“School went on just as usual, though. Christmas came, and Belle
didn’t have money for the usual treat. But we had lots of sorghum
molasses, and Mother let her have a taffy pulling in our kitchen and
we had lots of fun.
“Everybody got along well in their books and we were going to
have last day exercises, as we always did, with recitations and
songs and games. Belle staid late at the schoolhouse the evening
before and reached home just as Truman came in from the
postoffice. He handed her a long, thin envelope and she tore it open
and read the letter it contained. Before she got through she was
dancing all around the kitchen, laughing and crying at the same time,
and Mother took the letter from her hand and read it aloud.
“I can’t remember how that letter read, but it was from the board of
education. They said they had decided to put our school back on the
pay roll and that they understood that Belle had taught it in a very
satisfactory manner since the opening of the term. She was to send
her record of attendance and they would forward the five salary
vouchers of thirty dollars each, which were due her. There was some
more about its being unusual, but that they felt she deserved it. It
was no wonder Belle was so happy, was it?”
 ANDY’S MONUMENT
Bobby and Alice and Pink had been telling Grandma about the
soldiers’ monument that was to be placed in the courthouse yard.
“It is to be made of granite,” said Bobby, “and the names of all the
soldiers from this county who died or were killed in the war will be cut
on one side of it.”
“Well, well,” said Grandma thoughtfully, “that makes me think of a
monument I knew about long ago, but this monument wasn’t made
of granite.”
“Marble, may be,”suggested Alice.
“No, not marble, either. You never heard of a monument like this.
But, there, I might as well tell you about it,” and Grandma polished
her spectacles, found her knitting, and began:
“This monument was for a soldier, too. Andy Carson was his
name. He was a very young soldier, only fifteen years old, but large
for his age, and he ran away from home and enlisted. Three times
he ran away and twice his father brought him back, but the third time
he let him go.
“But poor Andy never wore a uniform or saw a battle. He died in
camp two weeks after he had enlisted and he was buried in our
cemetery, with only Father to read a chapter out of the Bible and say
a prayer, because the preacher was clear at the other end of the
circuit.
“Right away Mrs. Carson began to plan for a monument for Andy.
At first it was to be just an ordinary monument, but the more she
thought about it the grander she wanted it to be. Nothing could be
too good for Andy. He should have the biggest monument in the
cemetery—a life-size figure. But she couldn’t decide whether to have
the figure draped in a robe with a dove perched on the shoulder or to
have it wearing a uniform and cap. Mrs. Carson finally settled on the
uniform, though she couldn’t give up the idea of the dove, so there
was to be a dove in one outstretched hand.
“But the Carsons had no money and they didn’t like to work. If
anyone mentioned work to Mr. Carson, he would begin always to talk
about the misery in his back. When brother Charlie had a job he
didn’t want to do, he would bend over with his hand on his back,
screw up his face as if he were in great pain, and say, ‘Oh, that
misery in my back!’
“Mother said Mrs. Carson had not been lazy as a girl, but that she
had grown discouraged from having so many to do for and nothing to
do with. Sometimes she came to visit Mother, because Mother was
always nice to everybody. She was very tall and thin, with a short
waist, and she wore the longest skirts I ever saw and a black slat
sunbonnet.
“There was a big family of children—a girl, Maggie, older than
Andy, and Willie, a boy a year younger, and four or five smaller
children. The older ones came to school part of the time, but none of
them ever came to church—partly because they had no proper
clothes, I suppose.
“They lived on a farm left them by Mrs. Carson’s father. The land
was all run down and worn out. It was covered with briars and broom
sage and a stubby growth of trees. Fences were down, and the
buildings were unpainted and old.
“So, though the Carsons talked a great deal about Andy’s
monument, no one ever thought they would get one. But Mother said
it was the first thing Mrs. Carson had really wanted for years and
years and people generally got the things they wanted most if they
were willing to work hard for them. And it turned out that all the
Carsons were willing to work hard for Andy’s monument. It was
astonishing the way they worked.
“Mrs. Carson and the children started with the house and yard.
They cleaned the rubbish off the yard and raked and swept it and
planted flowers. They made the stove wood into a neat pile and