Die exzentrische Psyche

The reflexive modernization of western societies corresponds with a modernization of mental structures. Having lost its structural rigidity the human mind is attaining more variability, fluidity and accessibility; it becomes more flexible, vivid, communicative and much more connected with social life. On the other hand a modernized psyche which is internally less armored and secure and externally less isolated and defined seems at the same time rather unsettled and can be disturbed more easily. A decrease of psychic stability, in the classical sense of character formation, may correspond with an increase of liability to disturbances. This mental ambivalence generates all kinds of critical diagnoses of our times complaining about a cultural decline and blaming a morbid society which comes under pathogenic suspicion. Is there a new type of “social character” in globalized capitalism after the authoritarian personality disappeared in sync with the authoritarian society and the narcissistic personality disappeared in sync with the culture of narcissism? Does the self suffer from a neoliberal pressure towards self-responsibility, from a depressive exhaustion by abundant options or from the power of economic, social and cultural acceleration? Or is the self even completely dissipating in the social and digital networks of modernity? Considering some worrying phenomena of the present age I make the case for psychoanalytic serenity. I recommend an unbiased, precise and sober view, an attitude of evenly suspended attention avoiding the projective distortions of our own profession. There is indeed a new social character evolving from the manifold forms of mental externalization and desperately seeking social resonance: becoming eccentric a modernized psyche reveals to the social world what it is made of.