Woke. It’s all Freud’s Fault

The woke ‘culprit’ turns out to be Sigmund Freud. Eh?

On one level, the outcome of the November 2024 US Presidential election appears to be a resounding rejection of woke culture, woke politics and woke law by the US electorate. Certainly President Trump’s team of cabinet and senior departmental appointees seems to be intent on using momentum from the election to dismantle the apparent stronghold that woke has on US institutions.

And, as is often the case, where the US goes, much of the Western world seems to follow.

Has woke now had its high and is on a downward slide? First, let’s identify ‘woke’ as best we can. The Wikipedia explanation of woke says that:

“Beginning in the 2010s, it came to be used to refer to a broad(er) awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.”

This definition seems to me to describe the behavioural consequences of the psychology of woke. It doesn’t explain the state of mind that drives woke.

What I’m interested in for this article is the deeper psychological state that makes woke commitment so religiously-like emphatic amongst its proponents and promoters.

Why do I see the psychology as important? It’s because woke politics seems to be driven primarily by deep-seated emotions held by people on a deeply personal level. Compare this to (say) the apparent dry practical analysis of facts relied upon by proponents of free market economics. In politics, emotions will ordinarily outpoint practical analysis.

This, I think, provides one viable explanation as to why woke has been so successful over the last decade or more. Woke activists have engaged in emotional ‘slap downs’ of free market economic rationalism. So, to fight back or argue against something it’s necessary to understand that ‘something’.

I did a Google search for ‘woke psychology’ to see if there are readily available explanations. However, this only produced links to explanations that I felt were superficial. But then I read The Courage to be Disliked, an international bestseller by Japanese philosophers/psychologists Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.

Now I don’t want to attribute something to this bestseller that overextends the point of the book. But I think my assessment offers an insight worth considering. Let me explain.

For want of a better description The Courage to be Disliked is a self-help book, which challenges the reader to contemplate their mental approach to life. It’s sold well over 10 million copies, mainly in Asia. I’d recommend it as required reading in all Western universities. Why? Because it directly challenges the woke state of mind at a deeply personal and individual level. And universities seem to be the breeding ground for woke thinking. So it’s here that a challenge to woke psychology is a good start.

The Courage to be Disliked takes the reader through the psychology of Austrian psychiatrist, Alfred Adler, someone I’d never heard of. I’m glad I now have. Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was a colleague of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Both were instrumental in the development of psychology as a medical science. But they took quite divergent paths in at least one fundamental way.

Here's my simplistic layperson’s view on the difference for the purposes of this commentary.

Freud reasoned that people’s mental situation in life is determined for them by the things and experiences that happened to them in life. That is, that people are victims of their background and experiences. The Courage to be Disliked argues that, in line with this Freudian approach, most psychological counsellors and psychiatrists would argue that people suffer from traumatic events in their past and therefore that whatever someone feels, it is not their fault. The Courage to be Disliked states that “Freudian aetiology (attribution of the cause for something) denies our free will and treats humans like machines.”

In stark comparison, The Courage to be Disliked says that Adlerian psychology rejects this Freudian mental state predeterminism. Instead Adlerian psychology asserts that “We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences … so called trauma … but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”

This theme—that each of us has complete control of our own mental state—is developed further. The book states, “the important thing is not what we are born with but what we make of that equipment.” And “our life is not something that someone gives us but something we choose ourselves and we are the ones who decides how we live.”

The deep opposition between Adlerian and Freudian concepts on this issue provides what I see as a major link to woke.

Woke is essentially a political movement or ‘thought wave’ which claims that all sorts of ‘problems’ in society can be explained as the fault of someone or something else. We would surely have to say that this is very Freudian. So, men, as a class and therefore individually, are to blame for any trauma experienced by women, either currently or in the past. White folk, as a class and therefore individually, are to blame for any trauma experienced by coloured people, either currently or on the past. Jews, as a class and therefore individually, are to blame for trauma experienced by Palestinians, either currently or in the past. Heterosexuals, as a class and therefore individually, are to blame for trauma experienced by gay and LGBT people, either currently or in the past.

In explaining Adlerian psychology, The Courage to be Disliked denies the very existence of trauma. At this fundamental level my reasoning is that the denial of trauma destroys the (Freudian) psychological basis of wokeism. If trauma does not exist, how can anyone or any situation be blamed? No trauma. No blame. The consequence of this simple psychological denial is a spear in the heart of woke’s psychological justification.

Acceptance of the denial of trauma as a psychological ‘reality’ leads to the collapse of political concepts of social inequality, racial injustice, sexism, denial of LGBT rights, identity politics, white privilege, etc.

The Courage to be Disliked develops this psychological theme in detail. Look at some of the topic headings in the book: ‘Trauma does not exist’; ‘People fabricate anger’; ‘Unhappiness is something you choose for yourself’; ‘Your life is decided here and now’.

The Courage to be Disliked does not draw a direct connection with the politics of woke. That is my linear link. But Adlerian psychology surely rips apart the psychological premises upon which the vehement, even angry proponents of woke depend as an internal, personal justification for the spewing of hate against those they blame.

In summary, The Courage to be Disliked says that each of us can control our own lives leading to greater happiness and sense of self-worth. The Freudian-inspired woke position is that people, whether as individuals or classes, have no control over their own lives, that they are victims and that other people, classes and circumstances are to blame and are responsible.

Adlerian psychology demands that we accept responsibility for ourselves. Freudian-inspired woke denies self-responsibility and transfers responsibility to someone else.

Perhaps, like me, you’ll also see the extent to which Adlerian psychology rips asunder woke psychology. That’s why I think it’s so valuable.

Photo by Evangeline Shaw on Unsplash

Corporate capture

Let’s now contemplate why it is that so many corporations have been seduced into woke agendas over the last decade-or-so.

There are, I think, some practical explanations.

First, woke ideology flowed out of theoretical discourse in universities and captured the policy heights of government institutions. In this context, corporations needed to comply both with woke-inspired regulations and the ‘wink-nudge’ posturing of institutions that have power over government approval processes.

Running parallel with this have been the likes of the privately run World Economic Forum (WEF) and its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouse (DEI) agenda for example. This agenda advocates a woke view of businesses’ social responsibility. Such DEI agendas have created compliant businesses where corporations are commercially induced through supply chain leverage to ensure they engage in DEI box-ticking exercises to ‘prove’ their woke compliance.

But there’s another layer: marketing. Ultimately business-to-business supply chains end up needing to ‘sell’ to consumers. Marketing departments and professionals engage in the ‘business’ of psychology. They study human behaviour and build strategies around their understandings of human motivations and behaviour. Over the last several years significant sections of the marketing profession have stuffed up their human behaviour analysis in the belief that woke rules.

The standout disaster was Gillette’s 2019 ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign. Forbes Magazine describes the campaign as an exercise in social responsibility positioning that blew back in Gillette’s corporate face. Gillette lost 15 per cent of its sales in six months and the company suffered an $US8 billion valuation write down. Woke failed for Gillette but the message didn’t seem to penetrate other corporations. In Australia a long list of corporations funded and supported a Yes vote in the Voice referendum. This intrusion into politics (and I would argue woke-orientated politics) resulted in a trashing of corporate reputations. This was corporate wokism on display again I would argue.

But things are rapidly changing in this respect if US indicators after the November 2024 election are accurate. This Substack article—Economic Power Players Send Woke Corporations a Clear Message—details how US corporations are quickly dumping their woke agendas. I doubt that corporations are doing this out of some intellectual revelation that Adlerian psychology ‘trumps’ Freudian aetiology. It’s more likely a response to a massive political shift that’s about to impact commercial reality in the US. And the corporate and marketing gurus who followed woke until now may be quickly realigning their thoughts to protect their corporate careers. But that’s just speculation!

In the online discussions I’ve read on the Freud-Adler contribution to psychology, professionals in the area see value in both perspectives. Certainly, ‘we humans’ are complex animals. There is surely no single explanation that ‘explains us’. But the woke infestation of the mind holds other people responsible because of individual circumstances of birth or situation. This is an ugly, dangerous and destructive mindset at both an individual and societal level. It’s deeply dehumanising.

The Adlerian mindset, as explained in The Courage to be Disliked, is a harder, more self-confronting approach. In saying to us that we have control of ourselves, our present and our destiny, we are forced to look solidly into the mirror of our own souls. That’s hard. To hold ourselves responsible for who we are takes courage. But in doing so we liberate ourselves to be happy. We liberate ourselves to have constructive social relationships. The Adlerian approach is the more likely pathway to Martin Luther King’s dream where each of us is judged on the content of our character.

Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash

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