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I will disappoint a few readers here, but last night was the first time I saw the movie Fight Club (1999), starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Long has the film been considered one of the best lad’s movies, tapping into the primal urges of the male-psyche, indulging in wanton violence and general mischief making. This observation is, however, simplistic to the point of facile ignorance. Fight Club is not about gratuitous violence, it is a millennial social commentary, which delves deep into the psychoanalysis of the main character, and by implication, the wider male population.

***Spoiler Alert - If you haven’t seen the film, stop reading now***

A quick review of informed reader comments, on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), coveys a very cinema-centric view of the picture. Viewers tended to define the movie in the context of previous films, such as The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, and Trainspotting. Each of these comparisons is justifiable, however none mention (at least the ones I read) Sigmund Freud, or the discipline of psychoanalysis. This is bizarre considering the nature of the films narrative.

I’m not a psychologist, and my knowledge of Freud is basic at best, but I’ll try and cover the central tenets of ego-psychology, before we progress. Freud argues that the ego (the consciousness) has to broker continuous internal conflicts within the mind. These conflicts are between competing factions, which seek to regulate behaviour.

The first of these conflicting factions is the “id”, which we know is one’s primal urges, wants, and desires. The id is the - often irrational - need to indulge in pleasures, and the resultant chemical stimuli within the brain, be it induced by sexual, emotional, or chemical means.

Naturally the id leads us to the “superego” or “over-I”. The superego is the internalised moral authority, which seeks to suppress, more often than not very successfully, the id. The superego is usually an internal manifestation of the wider societal morality, usually propagated by, but not exclusive to, religion, media, or law. The superego is however, an internal mechanism.

The third faction is “reality”, or as Freud preferred, society. The ego must mediate between the id and superego, yet it is influenced by reality. Reality imposes restrictions, opportunities, and consequences. If the person decides to suppress the authority of the superego, he may find oneself the subject of consequence. Or one may find the reality does not offer one the opportunity to indulge in his wants and desires. The ego looks to moderate these three opposing components within the mind, this is called the “compromise”.

This internal quarrel can often be too much for the person. The constant mediation between urges, morality, and reality, puts a great strain on the mind. The basis of psychoanalysis is to equip the patient with the understanding, and means, to lessen the stress caused by internal conflict. In rare occasions the mind will breakdown, and the ego will cease to correctly mediate the quarrel. This can lead to manic-depression, or in extreme cases, multiple personality disorder, where either the id or superego, takes over the ego, while simultaneously suppressing its adversary. This split personality may switch between the two (or more, as distinct aspects of either the id or superego, may manifest individually in extreme cases) conflicting personas for indeterminate periods of time.

This is the point where more knowledgeable students of Freud, step-in, and correct my limited understanding of psychoanalysis; or alternatively, they commend me on my sublime comprehension, and subscribe to the blog for life.

I was surprised therefore, that nobody had made the link between psychoanalysis and Fight Club, in the IMDb reader reviews I read.

Many reviewers concentrated on the films observations on consumerism, quoting Tyler Durden’s (Brad Pitt) statements on possessions and day-to-day drudgery. This is fair enough; the film does seek to challenge, in a Swiftian manner, the shallow reality of modern capitalism.

It also, as another reviewer commentated, addresses the masculine hormone-fuelled urges of the male, stating that the film centres on: over grown boys who wish to brandish their high levels of testosterone. This is over simplistic, and somewhat insulting, but it does lend itself to my observations about Freud.

The novelist who wrote Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, is one of America’s best contemporary fiction writers, and it’s implausible to imagine the writer doesn’t have a sound grounding in psychoanalysis.

The “Narrator”, played by the always-brilliant Edward Norton, is clearly disillusioned with reality. He is the Travis Bickle for the Generation-X: a wandering, emotionally crippled, insomniac. The Narrator even begins to attend various self-help groups (for various ailments, from which he doesn’t suffer), in an attempt to remedy his loneliness, and sate his need for emotional release. After a year of pretending to have various disorders, including blood parasites and testicular cancer, we observe - unknowingly at first - the Narrator’s complete psychological breakdown.

Norton’s character descends into a self-destructive and oblivious, but supremely cathartic, indulgence of his id. Shifting seamlessly between two-consciousnesses, Norton creates a powerful alter-ego, Pitt’s Tyler Durden, who challenges the controls, and counter-intuitive demands, of reality. Durden is, unlike the Narrator, sexually promiscuous, aggressive, impulsive, and proactive. The Narrator is taken along for the ride, and is influenced, and somewhat liberated, by Durden’s excessive indulgence.

Probably the most important commentary of David Fincher’s film is the observation that modern life is the root-cause of the Narrator’s psychological struggles. Does modern life impose unrealistic limitations upon the male superego, yet constantly - through sexually explicit advertising and violent cinema - pandering to his id? Is the male desire to hunt, kill, and indulge in physical competition, suppressed by the softening of his role in society? Are the sexual liberation of the female, and the increasing professional prominence of women, an affront to his primacy?

The eponymous Fight Club allows bankers, ad-men, and mailroom lackeys, to compete in direct aggressive conflict, outside the constraints of the society. They can satisfy primal urges that have been suppressed by an overpowering social-order. Modern life has emasculated them; repressing their id, and forcing them to conform to a sterile metro-sexual standard, which has been devised by rabid consumerism.

This emasculation is conveyed by the Narrator’s obsession with Ikea furniture, labelled clothes, and his conformist apartment. Durden’s first contribution is the destruction of the Narrator’s possessions (he blows-up his apartment), leaving him with nothing - free to be a student of the id. Ultimately Durden becomes an underground Kingpin, with army of wilful students, and a quest to subvert the consumerist reality, manifested in a wave of malicious terrorism. It’s this anti-establishment dissidence, that has endeared the film to Marxist sympathisers and anti-capitalist movements.

The obvious question is whether the modern reality is indeed an emasculating experience, and what implication does the psychological frailty of the modern male have on our civilisation? Is our suppressed male id a potential time bomb of violent militancy, as the film suggests?

Certainly in the U.S. we have seen an increasing necessity for men to prove that they buck the consumerism and gloss of modernity. Some conservative men try very hard to prove they’re still cowboys, that they still have a very clear masculine role in society. Some of these men blog, and it’s insightful to read their commentary. They write about shooting, hunting, car maintenance, and are, almost without exception, in favour of the Iraq War.

It is this pseudo-cowboy disposition that President Bush appeals to when he dons his jeans and cowboy hat, before frolicking around his ranch for photo shoots. Of course Bush is no more a cowboy as I am, he’s a member of the North East Elite with a penchant for running unsuccessful oil-businesses. However Bush’s political Svengali, Karl Rove, understands the attraction of a rawhide alpha-male, with a backside like two-eggs in a handkerchief.

Bush keeps fit, plays up his Texan credentials, and refers to himself with ridiculous monikers such as the “decider.” While he doesn’t have the sexual promiscuity of Clinton, his Christian superego would never permit it, he certainly plays to the id-related agenda of the conservative alpha-male. Bush can often be caught criticising the intellectual liberal elite, in favour of his fondness for policy based on down-to-earth gut-feelings.

One of the political ramifications of the internal conflict between the id and the superego is our reaction to ethnic integration within our civilisations. Man is a naturally tribal animal, and his natural reaction to people of differing ethnicity and culture, is suspicion and hostility. The westernised liberal superego, drawing on centuries of reason and enlightenment, naturally curtails the reactionary bigotry of the id, leading to placid acceptance of immigration and integration. However the reality, and therefore the body politic, is fluid and changeable.

Incidents within the reality, such as a terrorist attack or economic stagnation, can affect the ego’s moderation of the id, or indeed, its proclivity to listen to the superego. This can result in a change in opinions, as the mind shifts emphasis between reason and emotion. This theory reaches its conclusion, with the emergence of intolerant political movements who offer a new set of moral standards, which adhere to the newly emboldened primal emotions. This adoption of a new, more irrational, moral compass, quells the internal conflict between the id and the superego, as they are now more analogous - this offers the citizen internal peace as they accept their natural tribal prejudices. This is exactly what happened in 1930’s Germany, the Nazi party offered legitimacy for prejudice brought about by economic turmoil.

As Mark Edmundson explained in the New York Times Magazine recently, Freud predicted - if not by name - Hitler’s arrival in his later political writings. And equally, one could argue, the modern consumerist suppression of the id, and the economic hardships brought about by globalisation, will again provide the political oxygen, for opportunistic fascist political movements to gain popularity by offering a new morality, more attuned to an increasingly powerful repressed cinder keg of raw emotion.

Or am I reading far too much into a film about gratuitous violence?