Hypocrisy vs Symptom

I listened to the Know Your Enemy podcast episode “Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield)” a year or so ago, and there’s a game they play that’s stuck with me ever since:

(quotations lightly edited)

[Sam Adler-Bell]: One of the things that Pat is describing reminds me of something that he and I have talked about before, the hypocrisy versus symptom game. […] In American politics, hypocrisy has this analytical and moral weight. Constantly politicians are saying, well, you say that you care about this, but you do this. And the hypocrisy is meant to be explanatory, to cash out to some kind of political benefit for the people who pointed out.

But one of the things that psychoanalysis has switched my brain onto is that almost always where there is a claim of, or I myself identify hypocrisy, I should think: is this hypocritical or is this symptomatic? And what that means is, is this hypocritical, meaning that these are irreconcilable beliefs, or is there some middle term? Is there something that connects these things that makes what appears to be incongruous, in fact, entirely congruous?

[Pat]: Calling something a hypocrisy is very interesting as a gesture because it establishes the person who’s calling it out as having better perspective and a moral judgment, but also puts the burden supposedly on the hypocrite to resolve that contradiction. When in fact, no, the contradiction is how they live. The contradiction does resolve problems for them.

[Sam]: The contradiction is the solution for them.

Sam and Pat give a few different examples. Antisemitic stereotypes that cast Jews as both powerless bomb-throwing levelers and all-powerful financiers; slaveholders who need the enslaved to be childlike wards and scheming killers; anti-abortion politics that sanctify the fetus and then discard mothers and children the moment they’re born; police narratives that make the same person a child, an animal, and a sophisticated criminal all at once. In each case, what looks like a contradiction from the outside is doing work on the inside — holding fear, shame, and self-recognition at bay, so a way of life can keep going.

They also take up what’s happening in Israel. A country founded to protect a people from genocide, committing a genocide to (they believe) protect themselves. Is that hypocritical? Sure, but if we stop there, we miss a big piece that might actually help stop the genocide: an understanding of the underlying structure that causes the symptomatic behavior.

All of Sam and Pat’s examples are really intense, so I’ll give an example of my own life that’s a little lower stakes. I have taken to writing a lot lately about how to be in relationships. Sometimes I give advice that I myself have a hard time following. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe. But seen from the inside, I know why I do this: because advice like being vulnerable and asking for what you need is really hard. It’s much easier to write about that than to actually practice in real life.

This self-understanding helps me be gentler with myself. Instead of calling myself a hypocrite (a self-criticism that would only make it harder to be vulnerable with others!) I try to give myself a little grace for when I do the easier thing.

The hypocrisy vs symptom game isn’t really a game. It’s never hypocrisy, it’s always symptomatic. The question is just what underlying structure is causing the apparently contradictory symptoms.

Hypocrisy has joined my list of traits that I don’t believe in anymore, along with laziness and selfishness. These are circular descriptions, thought-terminating insults, whether used against others or against our own selves. If you find yourself thinking that you or anyone else is a hypocrite (or lazy, or selfish), consider asking yourself, “Is this a symptom? What problem is it solving?”

And then, just maybe, you can find a better solution.