As we have seen in detail, studies carried out by various teams of psychologists have established that truly altruistic actions are abundant on a daily basis, disproving the thesis that human motivation is systematically selfish by nature.
Another school of thought argues not that altruism is nonexistent, but that it is pernicious, immoral, or unhealthy. These thinkers assert what psychologists and philosophers call “ethical selfishness,” a doctrine according to which selfishness is a virtue that is the foundation of a personal morality.
Machiavelli justified selfishness in some respects. He was convinced that evil was necessary in order to govern, and that altruism constituted a weakness. “A prince,” he wrote, “and especially a new prince, cannot possibly exercise all those virtues for which men are called ‘good.’ To preserve the state, he often has to do things against his word, against charity, against humanity, against religion. Thus he has to have a mind ready to shift as the winds of fortune and the varying circumstances of life may dictate. And as I said above, he should not depart from the good if he can hold to it, but he should be ready to enter on evil if he has to.”1
A more radical position would be taken by the German philosophers Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, who denounced altruism as a regrettable sign of impotence. Max Stirner exercised some influence over Karl Marx’s intellectual development and over the German anarchist movement. He rejected the idea of any duty or responsibility toward others. In his eyes, selfishness represents the symbol of an advanced civilization. He thus sings its praises:
Here, egoism, selfishness must decide, not the principle of love, not love motives like mercy, gentleness, goodnature, or even justice and equity.2
Nietzsche too had little regard for neighborly love, a notion he regarded as an attitude promoted by the weak for the weak, inhibiting the pursuit of personal development and creativity. According to him, we should feel under no obligation to help others, no more than we should feel any guilt at not intervening in their favor. “You shall seek your advantage even at the expense of everything,”3 he advises, and adds, “You crowd together with your neighbours and have beautiful words for it. But I tell you: Your love of your neighbour is your bad love for yourself.”4 By speaking thus, Nietzsche violently censures Christianity and all those who preach subjection of the individual to an external authority. He concludes in Ecce Homo, written not long before he lost his sanity: “Morality, the Circe of mankind, has falsified everything psychological, from beginning to end; it has demoralized everything, even to the terrible nonsense of making love ‘altruistic.’ ”5
After these philosophers, the twentieth century knew two figures who symbolized selfishness. One is the American writer Ayn Rand. Almost unknown in Europe, she is an icon among libertarian thinkers in the United States. The other is Sigmund Freud, still very influential in France, Argentina, and Brazil, but on the way to being forgotten everywhere else in the world where university-level teaching of psychology scarcely makes a case for psychoanalysis.6 Ayn Rand proclaims that being selfish is the best way to be happy. Freud asserts that endeavoring to adopt an altruistic attitude leads to a neurotic imbalance, and so it is healthier to accept fully one’s natural selfishness.
The case of the writer Ayn Rand,7 who went so far as to assert that altruism is “immoral,” is particularly interesting, since she continues to enjoy considerable influence in American society, especially in ultraconservative circles.8 It is hard to understand the rift that divides the United States today, between Republicans and Democrats, between supporters and opponents of social solidarity and an active role of the government in the lives of citizens, without measuring the influence of Ayn Rand’s thinking. Born in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and naturalized as an American, Rand died in 1982 at the beginning of the Reagan era; she is one of the most popular authors across the Atlantic. In 1991, according to a poll carried out by the Library of Congress, Americans cited Atlas Shrugged, her main work, as the book that influenced them the most, after the Bible! Published in 1957, this 1,400-page saga, which defines the vision of Ayn Rand’s world—was printed in a run of 24 million copies. Even today it sells several hundred thousand copies a year. Two other novels, Anthem and The Fountainhead, published in 1938 and 1943, respectively, were also huge bestsellers.
The vogue for this author and philosopher was so great that in the United States, almost everyone of a certain age had “an Ayn Rand phase.” President Ronald Reagan was one of her fervent admirers. Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, which controls the American economy, declared she had profoundly shaped his thinking, and that “our values are congruent.”9 Ayn Rand was at Greenspan’s side when he took the oath before President Ford. She is also a heroine for the Tea Party and political movements that derive from her their urge to reduce the role of government in the lives of citizens to a strict minimum. Paul Ryan, who was a candidate for the American vice presidency in 2012 as Mitt Romney’s running mate, requires his coworkers to read the writings of Ayn Rand; he asserts it was she who inspired his political career. The bulk of Paul Ryan’s economic and social program consisted of reducing taxes for the rich while reducing subsidies for the poor.10
Ayn Rand was very aware of her influence and “modestly” spoke of the three A’s that counted in the history of philosophy: Aristotle, St. Augustine, and herself.11 In France, Atlas Shrugged was published only recently, at the urging and with the financial contribution of an American admirer.
Rand does not claim that we are all fundamentally selfish: she deplores the fact that we are not selfish enough. For her, altruism is nothing but a masochistic vice that threatens our survival and leads us to neglect our own happiness in favor of the happiness of others, and to behave like “sacrificial animals.” “Altruism means that you place the welfare of others above your own, that you live for others for the sake of helping them, and that justifies your life. That is immoral, according to my morality,” she declared on TV in 1979. On the other hand, Rand says, “And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO.”12
According to Rand, altruism is not only detrimental; it is “a monstrous notion” that represents “the morality of cannibals.” It is also a failing: “You owe your love to those who don’t deserve it.… Such is your morality of sacrifice and such are the twin ideals it offers: to refashion the life of your body in the image of a human stockyard, and the life of your spirit in the image of a dump.”13
Rand doesn’t mince her words. In 1959, during a televised interview, she declared, “I consider altruism as evil.… Man must have self-esteem.… Altruism is immoral… because… you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately… you only love those who deserve it.” When the interviewer remarks, “There are very few in this world who are worthy of your love,” Rand replies, “Unfortunately, yes.… Nobody has ever given a reason why man should be his brother’s keeper. You see examples everywhere of man perishing by attempting to be their brother’s keeper.”14 In one of her novels, The Fountainhead, Rand writes, “Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism?”15
Ayn Rand thinks that human relations should be based on the business principles. Concerning these statements, in the same interview, the journalist questions her about her personal life: “You are helping your husband financially. Is there any contradiction here?” “No, because you see, I am in love with him selfishly. It is in my own interest to help him. If he ever needed it, I would not call it a sacrifice, because I take selfish pleasure in him.” She expands on this by asserting that in the presence of a drowning person, it is morally acceptable to risk saving him only if it’s someone close to you whose death would make your life unbearable. In any other case, it would be immoral to try to save him from drowning if the danger to yourself is high; that would show a lack of self-esteem.16
It would be tempting to brush Ayn Rand aside and regard her as a sinister anomaly who claimed to rebuild the world from almost nothing on the basis of selfishness (she tolerated Aristotle, whom she regarded as her sole philosophical inspiration, even though she “disagreed strongly with many of his positions”). Still, the fact that she made such a mark on American culture, which in turn exercises great influence over the rest of the world, forces us to consider this phenomenon, embarrassing as it may be.
Ayn Rand greatly contributed to the extreme individualism that is spreading throughout the United States. She provided a doctrine for all those who argue that the government should confine itself to watching over the protection of individual liberties and should not intervene in any way whatsoever in the personal affairs of citizens, especially not in the functioning of the economy. Neither the government nor anyone else should force us to concern ourselves with the poor, the elderly, or the sick, or compel us to pay taxes to help the unfortunate. That would be imposing on individuals the unacceptable obligation to share resources they earned from the sweat of their brows with people they don’t even know, without any advantage in return. In short, in a libertarian economy, the poor are regarded as killers of growth, beings who harm entrepreneurs. Only the individual creates growth; society is predatory, and the welfare state, a concept that prevails in Europe, constitutes “the most evil national psychology ever described,” and those who benefit from it are nothing but a gang of looters.17 For Rand, it’s the poor who exploit the rich.
This follower of selfishness is thus against Social Security and subsidies of any kind, the guaranteed minimum wage, and so on. According to her, citizens should pay only minimal, voluntary taxes solely to allow the government to protect their personal interests and ensure their safety by preserving a monopoly on the legal use of force (police and army). The government should not intervene in the functioning of the economy and should abstain from any kind of regulation. This apology for laissez-faire capitalism gave birth to the extreme forms of deregulated economy whose unfortunate consequences we see today.18
When a political-economic system is such that society abandons people who are old, alone, and without resources; children whose parents don’t have the means to offer them an education; or sick people who die for lack of care, not only is the system not fulfilling its role, but the human values that should regulate society are degraded.
According to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, it is above all the wealthy who are distressed by a strong government, since it “could use its power to adjust the imbalances in our society by taking some of their wealth and devoting it to public investments that would contribute to the common good or that would help those at the bottom.”19 But in reality, continues Stiglitz, “The fact of the matter is that there has been no successful large economy in which the government has not played an important role.”20 That is the case notably in Scandinavian countries where taxes are high—which would horrify Ayn Rand—and the inequality between rich and poor is less. Ayn Rand’s ideas, then, are a recipe for the unbridled promotion of individualism and inequality in society, an inequality whose harmful effects on quality of life, prosperity, justice, even health, are well-known.21 Today, as the economist Daniel Cohen stresses in The Prosperity of Vice, “A world left to the sole forces of ‘every man for himself’ is a mirage that must have been forgotten.… The role of the state is being restored to its former glory.”22
Ayn Rand developed her main argument in the following way: man’s most precious possession is his life. This is an end in itself and cannot be used as a means to accomplish the benefit of others. According to objectivist ethics, taking care of oneself and pursuing one’s own happiness by every means available constitute man’s highest moral rationale.23
Up to that point, the reasoning is not very original, and we can readily acknowledge that humans’ most cherished aspiration is to live their lives to the end and to experience more joy than suffering.
Then Rand clumsily sets in place the cornerstone of her intellectual building: man’s basic desire is to remain alive and to be happy; therefore he must be selfish.
That is where the logical fault lies. Rand reasons in the abstract and loses contact with lived experience. The latter shows that a selfishness as extreme as the one she advocates is much more likely to make the individual unhappy than to favor his or her prosperity. And that was, apparently, the case for Rand herself, according to the testimony of those who knew her for a long time. Haughty, narcissistic, curt, manipulative, and devoid of empathy, bordering on the psychopathic, she maintained vindictive and conflicted relationships with many of her friends and collaborators. She scorned the common run of people, whom she regarded as “mediocre, stupid, and irrational.”
Lost in the sphere of mental constructs, Rand ignored the fact that in reality—that reality she claimed to love above everything—altruism is neither sacrificial nor a cause of frustration, but constitutes one of the main sources of happiness and fulfillment among humans. As Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, father and son, one a renowned geneticist and the other a philosopher, write, “Ethics arose as the science of happiness. In order to be happy, is it better to take care of others than to think exclusively of oneself.”24 Research in social psychology has shown that the satisfaction produced by egocentric activities is less than that engendered by altruistic activities.25
The American philosopher James Rachels provides an additional argument to demonstrate the incoherence of Rand’s theses:
What is the difference between me and everyone else that justifies placing myself in this special category? Am I more intelligent? Do I enjoy my life more? Are my accomplishments greater? Do I have needs or abilities that are so different from the needs or abilities of others? In short, what makes me so special? Failing an answer, it turns out that Ethical Egoism is an arbitrary doctrine in the same way that racism is arbitrary. And this, in addition to explaining why Ethical Egoism is unacceptable, also sheds some light on the question of why we should care for others. We should care for the interest of other people for the same reason we care for our own interests; for their needs and desires are comparable to our own.26
Freud’s position on altruism, less dogmatic than Rand’s, is more based on intuition than on reasoning, but it turns out to be just as removed from reality. Freud paints a degrading picture of the human being, starting in early childhood: “Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.”27 Yet all studies based on the objective and systematic observation of many children, especially the studies carried out by Tomasello and Warneken that we described previously, have clearly demonstrated that Freud’s assertion is wrong, and that empathy and kind behavior count among the very first spontaneous behavior patterns of young children.
What’s more, if we believe what Freud wrote in a letter to the clergyman Pfister, things don’t get any better in adulthood: “I don’t rack my brains much over the subject of good and evil, but, on average, I haven’t discovered much ‘good’ in men. Based on what I know of them, they are for the most part nothing but scoundrels.…”28
According to Freud, society and its members are important to the individual only insofar as they favor or stand in the way of the satisfaction of his instincts. This disposition embraces all aspects of our existence, even dreams, which are “all completely egoistic.” Freud even asserts, “If a dream seems to have been provoked by an altruistic interest, we are only being deceived by appearances.”29
Freud alludes only rarely to altruism,30 notably when he declares, “Individual development seems to us a product of the interplay of two trends, the striving for happiness, generally called ‘egoistic,’ and the impulse toward merging with others in the community, which we call ‘altruistic.’ ”31 He adds, however, that altruistic and social tendencies are acquired under external constraints, and that “one should not overestimate human aptitude for social life.”32 Above all, the definition Freud gives of altruism as “aspiration for union with other members of the community” is inappropriate: one can unite with others to do good but also to harm, to promote racism, to belong to a gang of criminals, or to perpetrate genocide.33
Darwin and many others, however, haven’t stopped stressing the natural propensity of humans and other animals who live in society to cooperate and to display social instincts that, according to Darwin, “are always present and persistent,” as well as to give aid and assistance to their fellows, adding: “They feel at times, without the stimulus of any special passion or desire, some degree of love and sympathy for them; they are unhappy if long separated from them, and always happy to be again in their company. So it is with ourselves.”34 Darwin concludes, “Thus the reproach is removed of laying the foundation of the noblest part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness.”35
Freud frequently uses the term Einfühlung, which, as we have seen, gave birth to the term “empathy,” without regarding it as a step toward altruism. As Jacques Hochmann explains in his History of Empathy,36 Freud speaks of empathy as a way we compare our state of mind to that of others, and thus have a better understanding, for example, of the involuntary comic effect produced by a naïve or stupid remark. “Our laughter,” writes Freud, “expresses a pleasant feeling of superiority.”37
In Why War?, Freud formulates the hypothesis of the existence of a “death wish” that would initially be exercised against the individual himself before it is turned toward others:
Everything truly happens as if we were forced to destroy people and things, so that we don’t destroy ourselves, and so that we can protect ourselves against the tendency for self-destruction.38
This devastating depiction of human nature didn’t fail to impress contemporary thought, even though it has been profoundly called into question and revealed to be without any scientific basis. The theses of Freud and of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz, according to which the tendency to aggression is a primary and autonomous impulse among humans and animals, have been invalidated by many research studies.39
Carl Gustav Jung, another founding figure of psychoanalysis, has a similarly somber view of human nature:
Evil is of gigantic proportions, so that for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam’s relatively innocent slip-up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.… Evil is human nature itself.40
Thus Freud and Jung created a secular version of original sin in the modern world.
According to Freud and his disciples, humans show very little inclination to do good, and if perchance they come to nourish altruistic thoughts and behave kindly, that’s not real altruism, but rather a way to try to contain aggressive tendencies constantly lurking in their minds. Freud in fact describes aggressiveness as an “ineffaceable feature of human nature.”41 In “Drives and Their Fates,” Freud writes:
As an object relation, hate is older than love, its source being the narcissistic ego’s primal rejection of the stimuli of the outside world.42
For Freud, morality and prosocial behavior are born solely from a feeling of guilt and from defense mechanisms used by the ego to handle the restrictions that society imposes on the innate aggressive impulses of the individual, as well as the irrational demands of the superego.
According to the ethologist Frans de Waal, the reasoning of those who think that humans are naturally malevolent and aggressive is usually the following: “(1) natural selection is a selfish, nasty process, (2) this automatically produces selfish and nasty individuals, and (3) only romantics with flowers in their hair would think otherwise.”43 As for Darwin, he was, on the contrary, convinced that moral sense was innate and acquired over the course of evolution. Various studies presented by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind have shown that moral sense appears spontaneously in young children and is not attributable to the parents’ influence, social norms, or “demands imposed by society,” as Freud asserted.44 The psychologist Elliot Turiel had already observed that, from infancy, children have a sense of fairness, and think that harming others is wrong.45
For psychoanalysis, on the other hand, altruism is only a defense mechanism meant to protect oneself from aggressive impulses that are hard to suppress. One must above all not try to be altruistic. According to Freud:
All who wish to be more noble minded than their constitution allows fall victims to neurosis; they would have been more healthy if it could have been possible for them to be less good.46
For Anna, Freud’s daughter, altruism fits into the framework of defense mechanisms against internal conflicts.47 Notably, according to the International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, altruism is “an outlet for aggressiveness,” which instead of being repressed is redirected toward “noble” aims. Altruism is also supposedly “a vicarious enjoyment where conflict becomes attached to a pleasure that one refuses for oneself, but that one helps others to obtain.” Finally, altruism is defined as “a manifestation of masochism,” since it’s supposedly the sacrifices linked to altruism that are above all sought by the person who practices altruism.48 According to research in psychology, however, there is no indication proving that kindness stems from negative or masochistic motivations.
Psychoanalysis often describes itself as a way to know oneself, rather than a therapy. It is opposed to any overall evaluation of the effectiveness of its methods, deeming this approach too simplistic (the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan even speaks of “the subversion of the role of the doctor by the rise of science”). But, as a report by INSERM49 (the French National Institute for Medical Research) shows, when this effectiveness was evaluated by taking into account a sufficient number of cases, the therapeutic benefits were deemed almost nonexistent when compared with cognitive behavior therapy, which was proven effective for many disorders.
It even seems that the fact of following a psychoanalytic therapy often leads to an increase of egocentrism and a diminution of empathy. Following an investigation into the image and effects of psychoanalysis practiced on a large sample of the population, the social psychologist Serge Moscovici concluded that in most cases “the psychoanalyzed person—arrogant, secretive, given to introspection—always withdraws from communication with the group.”50 And the French psychiatrist Henri Baruk reproaches analytical practice with reinforcing interpersonal conflicts, insofar as the psychoanalyzed subject “often views with bitterness his friends, his parents, his spouse, all of whom he holds responsible for his ills.” Baruk also notes that some psychoanalyzed subjects become extraordinarily aggressive, and are extremely severe toward others whom they constantly accuse, behaving like antisocial individuals.51 Psychoanalytic practice, then, seems to make our tendencies toward altruism atrophy.
Some psychoanalysts, far from denying this selfish orientation, seem to endorse it. Jacques Lacan affirms that “well-intentioned people are much worse than those who are ill-intentioned.”52 Pierre Rey, former director of the magazine Marie Claire, had daily sessions with Lacan to try to cure himself of social phobia, which he said never diminished over the course of ten years of treatment.53 He asserts that he learned a lot from his analysis, among other things the fact that “all human relations are articulated around depreciation of the other: in order to exist, the other must be less.”54
It is undeniable that many psychoanalysts treat their patients kindly, and that patients testify to having benefited from psychoanalytic treatment, but there is no choice but to note, in light of the writings and words of the founders, that, overall, psychoanalytic theory seems to encourage selfishness and leaves little place for altruism.
Pierre Rey’s testimony, along with those of others, shows that psychoanalysis can’t readily be viewed as a science of the emotions. Otherwise, how could its outcome be such an inability to handle destructive emotions? Rey reports, “A terrifying upwelling of cries blocked behind my shell of polite friendliness gushed forth from me. From then on, everyone knew where they stood with the feelings I had for him. When I loved, I loved passionately, for this life and the next. When I hated, for this life and the next, and people soon knew it.”55
There is a confusion here, with grave consequences, between freeing the emotions, the way a pack of wild dogs is set free, and freeing oneself from the burden of destructive, conflicting emotions, in the sense of no longer being a slave to them. In the first instance, one gives up all control of negative emotions and lets them explode at the slightest opportunity, to the detriment of the well-being of others and of one’s own mental health. In the second instance, one learns to free oneself of their power, without either repressing them or letting them destroy our equilibrium.
Psychoanalysis does not resort to methods that permit one to gradually free oneself from the mental poisons of hatred, compulsive desire, jealousy, pride, and a lack of discernment, and to cultivate the qualities of altruistic love, empathy, compassion, mindfulness, and focus.
If psychoanalysis were limited to the realm of ideas, it would be one thing, but the fact that it has become a therapeutic practice has led to harmful consequences for many patients. A typical example is that of autism. In the 1950s, psychoanalysts, with Bruno Bettelheim in the lead, held mothers responsible for the autism of their children. “I believe,” wrote Bettelheim, “the initial cause of withdrawal is rather the child’s correct interpretation of the negative emotions with which the most significant figures in his environment approach him.”56 Psychoanalysts then spent the next forty years trying to “treat” these mothers (thus adding to their suffering in having an autistic child by making them feel guilty for the illness), all the while abandoning the child to his fate.
In fact, according to psychoanalysis, “the psychosis of the child is caused by a defense mechanism stemming from the attitude of an incestuous mother who is urged by the absence of a phallus to destroy the substitute for the missing phallus represented by her offspring.”57 Try to imagine anything more absurd.
In France, according to Franck Ramus, research director at CNRS (a national organization for scientific research), psychoanalysts continue to blame the parents, especially the mother, for their child’s illness. A psychiatrist with thirty years’ experience recalls witnessing “bizarre scenes” when he was training in the field of child psychiatry in consultation centers for autistic children: “Blaming the parents is a reality. During the interviews, they were interested only in the parents, whom they bombarded with questions. During the debriefing sessions, they were all qualified as psychotic, and the children’s problems were the exclusive consequence of paternal or maternal toxicity.”58
These theories have been abandoned for decades by all researchers and scientists, for whom autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a strong genetic component.59 There are many different forms of autism, and according to studies synthesized by Martha Herbert at Harvard, it is possible that the increase of the incidence of autism over the last fifty years might partly be linked to the globalized use of pesticides and fertilizers.60 What is certain is that this illness is in no way caused by the psychological influence of the mother.
Many emulators of Freud have preserved the orthodoxy of his doctrine to this day. Others have gone back to certain key points and have questioned, for example, the violence instinct or the postulate according to which all our desires are dictated by sexuality—what about, for example, the desire to walk in the woods, or visit an elderly friend? But, while trying to give their therapies a more human aspect, they have usually only promoted the more attractive forms of egocentrism. As the psychologists Michael and Lise Wallach have shown,61 in most of the adaptations of Freudian theories, like those suggested by Harry Sullivan, Karen Horney, and, on certain points, Erich Fromm, egocentrism continues to rule supreme
These psychologists argue notably that all forms of restrictions and obligations, dictated by society or by our internal norms, hinder our personal realization and distance us from our true identity.62 The unconstrained gratification of our impulses seems to them to be a priority. But in that case, it would be impossible to take part in collective activities and live in society. How could one play music or sports without conforming to the rules or sticking to a discipline? Imagine an orchestra in which every musician played however he liked, ignoring the conductor and the score. Nothing would distinguish the music from any kind of cacophony.63
In practice, expressing oneself free of any constraints seems more destined to hinder the good of society than to accomplish it.64 I met a young American woman who told me, “To be really myself, to be free, I have to be faithful to what I feel, and spontaneously express whatever I like and whatever suits me.” True freedom, however, does not consist in doing whatever comes to mind, but in being master of oneself. Gandhi agreed with this when he said, “The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.” This transformation, if we want to thwart the debilitating views of the champions of selfishness, consists precisely of diminishing our egocentrism and cultivating altruism and compassion.