“The unconscious is structured like a language”

 – Jacques Lacan.

Sometimes when we review the social frame that unconsciously drives us towards certain things we do, we formally think about the object of our desire, and sometimes, prominently, fail to think why we crave for those things that we desire. As we look closer to these unusual yet peculiar underlying structures, there lies the deep-rooted psychological distinctiveness. We might see no adequate relational strings between politics and psychological aspects whatsoever, but delving deeper enough into political scenarios, we can perceive their innate blueprints that are structured throughout the political and psychological frames.

Firstly, politics is extremely unstable and dynamic. For example, there were days during the  Nepalese Civil War when Sher Bahadur Deuba put bounty over Prachanda’s head, but now they are bound to work together at the same table. PM K.P. Sharma Oli (Khadga Prashad Sharma Oli) too has had similar political trajectory. But his narrative during the later  political period brought unusual oratorical narrative changes. After the fall of the Shah Dynasty, Nepalese populace saw the state go under Maoist, Nepali Congress, and other political leaderships too. The political unrest randomized the power over the nation for nearly 12 years. After these changes the formation of Nepal Communist Party brought an unforeseen trend in Nepalese politics.

My major concern here is about the narrative techniques used by PM Oli and their underlying mass-psychological operations. Though we might deny the presence of psychology in most of politics, we cannot deny the fact that it has underlying effects. Taking Post-Freudian psychoanalysis at hand, though it might hardly be tinged with mass psychology, yet it plays a major role for humanistic psychological-analysis.  

The Freudian psychoanalysis saw two fundamental contents of mind: the repression due to unfulfilled desire, leading to create the unconscious state in mind and manifestations of these desires to re-fulfill the repressed pleasures. The economically weak country like Nepal has had its people forcefully repress their desires. And without doubt, the repression plays a major role during its manifestation. The economic desire, psychological needs, passion fulfillment, desires of infrastructure and all other aspirations accommodated in the Human Development Index (H.D.I) were repressed for the mass population for decades. During these repressive eras, the politics always gave voice to the “bold” statement in microphones. The politicians always gave the extremist narrative. This created the vacuum among the populace by implanting the false-truth that the speech delivery in politics must always be “bold”, hardened and at an extreme level. As K.P.Oli entered the core-politics for leadership in NCP, he made speech deliveries for the major elections of (2074BS) 2017, where the general populace saw a new technique of speech delivery. These speech deliveries had certain formulations in their underlying meaning. As Freudian Psychoanalysis postulates the pleasure principle, that our desire and emotions essentially seeks pleasure from every aspects, be it in food, sleep, music, infrastructures, economic aspects, movies and books, news or any other aspects in our life, unconsciously we always seek pleasure through them. Now, what K.P. Oli’s narrative does here is, he unconsciously helps manifest the repressed pleasure of the general populace. In most of his speech, he talked about the undreamt of infrastructure of the nation, about the “unthought-of” blissful situations and scenarios that the nation can be built into. These blissful scenarios were actually thought of by every citizen in Nepal, but most due to the apparent and practical grotesqueness in the nation, people were unable to express it. The political scenario was built in such a way that made most people think it was worthless to dream and talk about such things of change, which were unconsciously thought to be silly or worthless talk. Amid all this, PM Oli’s Narrative with little sarcastic subtleness gave the manifestation of those repressed thoughts, which is based upon the pleasure principle. Human or any other being always runs after the pleasure principle and here Oli’s narrative strongly seems to be based upon this principle of pleasure.

Later during the election period, it seems that the mass population went through one of the random Post-Freudian phases, one of which is called “Reaction Formation”. The mentality among people went through this phase as the new political leader was presented to the nation.  It is also usual and obvious that such doubt should be formed among people. The population went through random political stages. After the election phase, the ultimate state had arrived,of “Trust and Mistrust” driven by instinct, what the post-Freudian psychoanalyst Erickson called “Hope”. This stage of “Hope” seems to be percolating through the populace in an ominous manner in any nation.

Many defense mechanisms and interpretations are seen to pervade through the masses. The Jungian analysis of mythical-archetype too plays a major role in intrinsic narrative formation. No matter what the narrative, the politicians utilize directly or indirectly, the hope for development and greater freedom.