Rhetoric and the Unconscious

MICHAEL BILLIG

Loughborough University
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU
U.K.

ABSTRACT: This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to
some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a
‘Dialogic Unconscious’. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon con-
scious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on
argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought
and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics and,
thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely
expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built
into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially
appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress
routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of
language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies
equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud’s famous case histories, such as that
of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud’s own theory of repression was itself
repressing.

KEY WORDS: Argumentation, consciousness, dialogical, discursive psychology, Freud,

rhetoric, thinking, unconscious

This paper presents the case for a rhetorical understanding of both con-
scious and unconscious thinking. These arguments are part of a wider
project to develop a rhetorical, or discursive, psychology (for statements
of this position, see for example, Antaki, 1994; Billig, 1991 and 1996;
Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1993; Potter, 1996; Potter and
Wetherell, 1987). For a variety of reasons – both theoretical and method-
ological – this project stands at variance with the main trends of orthodox
psychology, which prides itself on being a strictly scientific enterprise.
Anyone trained in orthodox psychology learns a mixture of approach and
avoidance. One is supposed to approach the recognised journals, which
are largely filled with experimental reports and which are virtually unread-
able for anyone not trained in the particular vocabulary of scientific psy-
chology. On the other hand, the trainee psychologist must learn to avoid
those sections of the library which house the ‘non-scientific’ stuff. The
proper psychologist is not to take the humanities seriously, because phi-
losophy, history and literary criticism are waffly endeavours which do not
follow experimental procedures. Amongst these unscientific enterprises

Argumentation 12: 199–216, 1998.

 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
200 MICHAEL BILLIG

is, of course, the rhetorical tradition. Not all psychological texts are on
the approved, scientific list, for there are waffly, and therefore improper,
psychologies. For example, the works of Sigmund Freud must be treated
as if carrying an intellectual plague, made all the more dangerous for being
camouflaged as ‘psychology’. At best, Freud can be treated as an infantile
pleasure, like thumb-sucking, which the mature, scientific psychologist
must outgrow.
There are, nevertheless, sound reasons for reverting to intellectual child-
hood, or for approaching what to the experimental psychologist is intel-
lectually forbidden territory. In the first place, as will be suggested, the
ideas of ancient rhetorical theory offer a crucial psychological insight into
the nature of human thinking. They suggest that to think is to engage in
argument and, thus, that human thinking is inherently dialogical. In this
respect, the rhetoric of argumentation provides the means of thought: it
permits topics to be opened up for public debate, and, by extension, for
the internal debates of solitary thought. This is a theoretical move made
by a number of critical psychologists, who are currently rebelling against
the standard experimental paradigms. Foremost amongst such critical psy-
chology is the project of discursive psychology, which points to the role
of language in constituting psychological states.
There is a further move which can be made. Rhetoric can be used to
understand what we think about, and also what we avoid thinking about.
Through the use of rhetoric, one can change topics of conversation or even
remove certain matters from the dialogic agenda. If thought is rhetorical,
then the rhetorical means for closing down discussion may throw light upon
the processes of repression, which was key to Freud’s theory of psychology,
but about which Freud had surprisingly little to say.
In order to sustain such a case, a number of points will need to be made
(see, Billig, 1997a, and in press for more details):
a) If consciousness is dialogical, then, by the same line of argument, there
is a case for claiming a ‘dialogic unconsciousness’.
b) Language is not only expressive but it is also repressive. In learning to
speak, we acquire desires which must be routinely, or habitually,
repressed, or driven from conscious awareness.
c) Because the repression is habitual, it can be observed in routine uses
of language, especially in conversation, but also in written texts.
d) Freud’s own theories were themselves pieces of language. If language
is repressive, as well as expressive, Freud’s writings not merely
expressed particular themes, but also would have contained their own
repressions, even as they were exposing the ideas of repression.
The implication is that it should be possible to re-analyze Freud’s own
works, in order to see what they might be repressing. A word of explana-
tion should be given at the outset. It is becoming increasingly customary
to expose Freud, accusing him of bad faith or suppression of evidence
(see, inter alia, Borch-Jacobsen, 1996; Masson, 1990; Webster, 1995). The
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 201

present analysis is not conducted in that spirit. Quite the reverse, it emerges
from a desire to integrate the central Freudian concept – that of repression
– with the emerging project of discursive psychology. If that involves a
critical re-reading of Freud, then this signifies a desire to read and re-read
his works, to enjoy their arguments and, in return, to engage in argument
with them.

THE NATURE OF THINKING

To begin with, it is necessary to outline briefly the rhetorical approach to

the topic of ‘thinking’ (for more details, see Antaki, 1994; Billig, 1991
and 1996; Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1993). Orthodox psychol-
ogists, particularly contemporary cognitive psychologists, have often taken
a Cartesian approach to the study of thinking. They have assumed that
thinking is a silent, solitary (even lonely) activity, which takes place mys-
teriously within the brain of the isolated individual. Thus, the psycholo-
gist cannot directly observe the processes of thinking, but must infer their
existence from outward behaviour.
This view of thinking, as an internal and individual activity, is exem-
plified by Rodin’s famous sculpture of ‘The Thinker’. Rodin depicts a
man (of course, a man – not a woman), sitting alone, with forehead resting
on his hand. He is not talking, nor paying attention to anyone. All his atten-
tion is directed inwards, as if he is removed from active social life. Nor is
he wearing clothes (if it is unclear why nakedness helps the inner life of
thought, then the absence of clothes emphasises that the thinker belongs
to no social group and carries no marker of cultural identity). The image
suggests that thinking is not a social, discursive activity, but is something
solitary and silent.
However, there are psychological problems with this image of thinking.
There is the methodological problem that a science of psychology, based
on this image, will lack an observable object of study. Its topics, whether
they be ‘attitudes’, ‘memory-stores’, or ‘heuristic processes’, will be ghostly
entities, which, however powerful the methodological microscope, can
never be directly observed. In this respect, cognitive psychology, like much
of psychology, is a strange scientific discipline: its objects of study, which
are the presumed ‘cognitive processes’ underlying thought, are inherently
unobservable, for these hypothetical processes are not assumed to be neu-
rological structures. Thus, cognitive social psychologists, in constructing
models of attitudinal processes, do not assume that neuro-psychologists
will uncover underlying physical structures which match their hypothetical
attitudinal models.
There is another factor, which should concern those involved in educa-
tion. The traditional view of thinking, as a wordless, soundless process,
seems to imply that the thinking of other people is always out-of-reach. We
202 MICHAEL BILLIG

may know our own thinking, but we can never know the thinking of other
people. If thinking is this solitary, private activity, then we can ask how is
it possible to teach thinking? According to the Cartesian view, it is hard
to see how children can be taught to think, for thinking cannot be demon-
strated. It must be something which mysteriously develops within the indi-
vidual psyche, rather like Rodin’s thinker, untouched by conversation or
social contact.

RHETORICAL VIEW OF THINKING

As Wittgenstein repeatedly argued in his later philosophical writings,

another position is possible (for discussions of the relations between
Wittgenstein’s ideas and discursive psychology, see, for example, Harré
and Gillett, 1994; Shotter, 1993a and 1993b). Thinking can be seen as a
social, and above all, discursive, activity. Of course, this idea well pre-dates
Wittgenstein. It was well expressed by the Eleatic Stranger, in Plato’s
dialogue The Sophist: ‘Thought and speech are the same; only the former,
which is the silent inner conversation of the soul with itself, has been given
the special name of thought’ (263 e).
This could be applied to Rodin’s solitary thinker. Far from being
removed from dialogue, he might be imagined to be conducting an internal
dialogue, debating with himself in an example of what the Russian psy-
chologist Lev Vygotsky termed ‘inner speech’ (Vygotsky, 1987; see also
Wertsch, 1991; Sampson, 1993). Such an internal conversation, given
The Thinker’s outward signs of preoccupation, will probably have an argu-
mentative character. He is unlikely to have divided his mind into two
speakers, only to find them in happy agreement – as if his desire says, ‘I
want to get off this rock and go for an ice-cream’ and his voice of con-
science replies ‘what a lovely idea’. Were this the case, he would not still
be sitting on the rock, head on hand.
Instead, we can imagine a fierce debate inside his head, turning over
the pros and cons of a course of action. Perhaps the voices of desire and
conscience are vigorously debating a course of action or the ethics of
another’s personality. Maybe, seated on his seaside rock, he is debating
whether, despite doctor’s advice, to go for that ice-cream. Whatever the
content of the internal debate, one might say that Rodin’s thinker-as-debater
has not been abstracted totally from social life. Instead, his internal
processes would be derived from publicly observable debate, as he uses,
silently and internally, a public language. He must have observed and par-
ticipated in debates, and, thus, acquired the skills of debate, or argument.
Only if he has done so can he sit there alone, arguing with himself.
This would imply that the skills of debate, or argument, are vital for
much of our thinking. To think about ethics, politics or human character –
in short, the questions which preoccupy social life – we need the skills of
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 203

language. Central to language are the skills of argument, for language is

not merely a device for naming objects or representing external reality.
Language provides the means of justification and criticism, and most
notably the faculty for negation. Indeed, a means of communication without
negation, and without the resources for justification and criticism, would
scarcely qualify to be a language (Billig, 1996).
Of all species, which can communicate to fellow members, only humans
have the faculty for negation and, thereby, for argumentation. Other species
can process visual information, recognise sounds and remember to orien-
tate to particular shapes. Chimpanzees can even be taught to label objects
and to make signs to signal basic requirements, such as those for food or
drink. However much effort is spent to develop the linguistic signing skills
of chimpanzees, there is a ceiling. No psychologist has been able to teach
a chimpanzee to use sign language to justify and criticise. Only humans,
equipped with the syntax of negation, can do these things. As such, dialogic
thinking, or the conduct of internal debate, is something which is pre-emi-
nently human.

THE STUDY OF THINKING

This linking of human thought to the use of language has a number of

implications for the sorts of discursive/rhetorical psychology which is
being developed by critical psychologists, especially by my colleagues
at Loughborough University, such as Charles Antaki, Derek Edwards,
Jonathan Potter and David Middleton. In the first place, discursive psy-
chology recommends that the topics of psychology should be studied
discursively, in contrast to the Cartesian approach which searches for
hidden processes of mind behind the outward use of language. The dis-
cursive approach, following the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, assumes
that many of the traditional topics of psychology are based on phenomena
which are constituted within dialogue, especially argumentative dialogue.
Thus, the psychologist, wishing to understand these phenomena, should
be looking in detail at the operations of discourse and dialogue
This can be illustrated with respect to the topics of attitudes or memory.
Traditionally psychologists have searched inside the mind for hypothet-
ical attitudinal structures or memory stores. Discursive psychologists, on
the contrary, claim that this is to look in the wrong place. Human memory
is not merely, or even principally, about retaining stimuli. It is about per-
forming social actions, such as remembering a birthday, remembering one’s
manners or remembering the sacrifices of past generations. There are a
whole range of activities which we call ‘remembering’, or ‘forgetting’.
Discursive psychologists claim that we should investigate what activities
are called ‘remembering’ and how these activities are accomplished in
social life. Above all, discursive psychology should examine the claims
204 MICHAEL BILLIG

people make to remember or forget things, and to see what they are doing
in making such claims. One of the findings of discursive psychology is that
people making memory-claims are typically not reporting on inner states,
but doing other things (Edwards, 1997; Middleton and Edwards, 1990). For
example, if someone, on returning from a trip, says to their partner ‘I did
remember you all the time I was away’, they are unlikely to be making a
simple report of an internal state. Instead, the memory-claim itself will be
an action which is accomplishing important interactional business.
The same move of looking at the outward behaviour, rather than the
hypothesised internal structure, can be seen in relation to a topic, which
has traditionally been central to social psychology – the study of attitudes.
The discursive/rhetorical approach directs the psychologist’s attention to
the dynamics of debate. One can see ‘the holding of attitudes’ in terms of
taking stances in matters of public controversy. Moreover, in participating
in debate, people typically are engaging in thinking, rather than outwardly
expressing a pre-formed, unchanging inner cognitive structure. In debates,
and more generally in conversations, people say novel things, making utter-
ances which in their detail have never been made before. Even when talk
returns to familiar themes, which the participants may have discussed pre-
viously, it seldom, if ever, returns in exactly the same ways (Billig, 1991).
Every day, people formulate sentences, which they have never said before,
and, indeed, which no-one else has ever precisely uttered before. In this
respect, dialogic creativity is a mundane, even banal, factor of the human
condition.
It is hard to account for this mundane creativity, if we assume that our
utterances are expressions of internal cognitive processes, which must
precede the utterances. Indeed, dialogue takes place too quickly to assume
that the outer pattern is merely a reflection of something more important
taking place internally. There is an important methodological implication.
The cognitive psychologist, taking the Cartesian line, assumes that thinking
is not directly observable, for it is always taking place beyond, or behind,
the observable, or hearable, surface of social life. On the other hand, given
that people are readily formulating new utterances as they debate issues,
and given that these utterances are typically not the outward expression,
or report, of inner processes, then in debate the processes of thinking are
directly hearable. The cut-and-thrust is the social activity of thinking.
By studying the micro-processes of talk, psychologists can directly
observe, or hear, the social activity of thinking itself. In this way, the psy-
chologist can see how human thinking is rhetorically accomplished and
contested. What was formally assumed to be hidden, indeed mysterious,
can be directly studied in its complexity.
There is a further implication in taking this discursive position. It is
possible to see how thinking is learnt. If thinking is modelled on conver-
sation, then the child’s entry into dialogue is an entry into thinking.
Language is not learnt in order that the child can possess a system of
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 205

naming or even to represent the outside world. Language is learnt in order

that children can participate in the conversations, and thus the social
activity, that surround their lives. From the earliest age, adults are speaking
to them, telling them things, commenting on their infantile reactions. As
children learn to respond, so they learn how to enter this rhetorical world
of justification and criticism. Moreover, they do not merely acquire the
formal syntax of argument, but they learn what counts as persuasive jus-
tification and criticism, as adults and older children offer ‘convincing’ argu-
ments why certain things should, or should not be, performed. And from
a comparatively early age, children acquire the skills to challenge argu-
ments and contest the rhetoric they hear (Dunn, 1988).
In all this learning, the child is not merely acquiring the rudiments of
language, but of human thinking; the lessons can be transferred or inter-
nalised from outer dialogue into inner dialogue, so that children learn to
conduct their own internal dialogues or thoughts, like Rodin’s thinker. The
movement, thus, is from the outer, social world of conversation and action
into the inner world of thought, not vice versa.

DISCOURSE AND FREUD

So far the argument has not been the least bit Freudian in its suggestion
that consciousness is dialogic. Freud, of course, was interested in the uncon-
scious, rather than conscious. Moreover, he was seeking to track down the
psychological elements of life which were buried within the individual’s
unconscious. His theoretical movement was from the outer world to the
inner world, turning, as it were, social activity outside-in: the outward
activity, such as moral behaviour or religious ritual, had inner origins,
or so he argued. The theoretical movement of discursive psychology is
the reverse: it turns the person inside-out. Processes, such as those of
thinking, which appear to be inward, hidden and mysterious, are claimed
to be outward and observable. In consequence, most discursive psycholo-
gists have little time for notions of the ‘unconscious’; indeed, many are
even uncomfortable with the word ‘consciousness’ (but see also Parker,
1992).
Nevertheless, it can be argued that just as consciousness is dialogically
constituted so is the unconscious (the argument must necessarily be brief
here, but for details, see Billig, 1997a and in press). The first step is to
recognise the theoretical importance of the idea of repression in Freudian
theory. For Freud, the characteristic point about the ‘id’ was that it was
repressed, or prevented from reaching consciousness. At the start of his
metapsychological essay The Ego and the Id, Freud was quite explicit about
this, claiming that the idea of the unconscious came from the notion of
repression. For this reason, in his ‘Autobiographical Study’, he claimed
that the great discovery of psycho-analysis was not the unconscious as such:
206 MICHAEL BILLIG

it was the process of repression, for ‘the theory of repression became the
corner-stone of our understanding of the neuroses’ (Freud, 1995a: 18).
There is something curious about Freud’s treatment of the notion of
repression. Although he claims it as the great discovery and corner-stone
of psycho-analytic theory, he has little to say about the details of its oper-
ation. In his essay, ‘Repression’, he claims that repression is something
which has to be continually achieved, otherwise the shameful desires, which
are kept from awareness, would flood back into consciousness. But he
offers few details to show how this task is continually achieved. In the
Introductory Lectures, he admitted that apart from it being accomplished
by the ego, ‘we know nothing more at present’ (p. 339).
As is well known, Freud often wrote about the mechanisms of the mind
in terms of hydraulic metaphors (see, for example, Shafer, 1976 for an
excellent analysis and critique of this tendency). It was as if the energy of
the id was constantly pushing against the doors of the ego. When the ego
relaxed its control on those doors, as for example in times of sleep, then
the energy comes bursting through, shaping our dreams. However, the
hydraulic metaphor may be unhelpful for understanding the processes of
repression, or the driving away of thoughts or wishes from conscious atten-
tion. If conscious thought is shaped by rhetoric, then so might the dynamics
of dialogue provide the resources for repression.
The reason for suggesting this possibility is simple. As we talk about
one topic – or think about a particular topic – so we are not talking or
thinking about others. It could be that the directing of dialogic attention
onto one set of topics, becomes a way of avoiding others and that there
are conventional rhetorical devices for achieving this outcome. If so,
rhetoric enables us, not only to open topics of conversation, but also close
them down. Moreover, the necessary rhetorical devices can be internalised
so that we might use them in our own internal, silent conversations,
employing rhetoric to censor the drift of our own internal dialogues. In that
case, the processes of repression, which are necessary for the creation of
the unconscious, are neither automatic nor necessarily mysterious. Just
like the processes of thinking, they are daily to be observed in countless
mundane conversations. If they were not, then humans would never be able
to acquire the necessary skills for the self-censorship of repression.

PROJECTION AND REPRESSION

The possibility of a dialogic, or rhetorically accomplished, unconscious

implies that discourse analysts must observe both what is talked about in
conversation and what is not talked about. It can be assumed that, on
occasion, speakers are involved in a joint activity of avoidance, so that par-
ticular ways of talking are repressed dialogically.
A example of such avoidance can be given. It is taken from a study,
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 207

which I conducted a few years ago in order to see how English families
talked about the British royal family (for details of the study, see Billig,
1992). The study involved listening to families talk about royal issues in
their own homes. The speakers rarely raised the issue of race, particularly
in respect to the question whether the heir to the throne might marry a non-
white person. The very issue raised difficult issues for white supporters of
the Royal Family, who saw the monarchy as symbol of nation and identi-
fied with the monarch as the representation of their own national identity.
Such supporters could not say that the monarch must always be white, for
that would risk the accusation of racism. Nor, for the same reasons, could
they say that they could not identify with a non-white as the epitome of
‘Britishness’. Again, they would be laying themselves open to the accusa-
tion. Moreover, they could not say that the Queen would disapprove of a
non-white daughter-in-law (or son-in-law), for that would suggest that the
Queen was racist, and also that the speakers themselves, in identifying with
a racist figureheads were themselves racist.
Instead, the speakers tended to adopt ambiguous ways of talking, when
the issue was raised. They would talk about an amorphous ‘them’, saying
‘they would not allow it’, leaving unsaid who ‘they’ were. Or they might
say that ‘the public’ would not stand for it’, as if they themselves were
not part of that public. It was as if they were projecting their own unac-
ceptable wishes onto unspecified others. Above all, awkward questions
were not asked by the other members of the family. It is as if all speakers
conspired dialogically to protect each other and to protect the projections.
In this sense, the avoidance was dialogically constructed and protected (for
details, see Billig, 1997b).

CONVERSATION AND PRACTICAL MORALITY

One of big discoveries of conversation analysis, which has been taken on

board by discursive psychology, is that everyday talk is immensely rich:
even seemingly simple interaction is filled with complexity. Because there
are multiple codes determining even short interactions, participants must
do a lot to keep interaction going. If they do not follow such codes, there
are likely to be breakdowns and misunderstandings (Nofsinger, 1991;
Edwards and Potter, 1993).
A sense of morality accompanies dialogic interaction. Harold Garfinkel
(1967), founder to ethnomethodology, claimed that, in studying the micro-
processes of social life, he was investigating ‘practical morality’. This can
be seen in ‘turn-taking’, to which conversation analysts given much atten-
tion. In order for conversation to take place, there have to be complex codes
about how speakers alternate their ‘turns’, by yielding turns, taking up
implied invitations to speak, interrupting without disruption and so on. If
these unwritten, but daily practised, rules are transgressed, the risk is not
208 MICHAEL BILLIG

merely the breakdown of the immediate interaction, but also a moral eval-
uation: speakers will accuse the transgressor of transgressing the morality
of interaction.
This can be illustrated hypothetically by the codes for asking questions.
There is a lot of evidence that questions, which are requests, will be
normally phrased with ‘indirection’ in American and European conversa-
tions, where direct question will appear rude or aggressive (Brown and
Levinson, 1987). This can be seen in academic seminars. At question-time,
critical questioners are expected to preface their remarks with phrases such
as, ‘I was fascinated to hear what you said about X, I wonder if you have
fully taken into account . . .’ or ‘I was interested in your remarks about Y
but was a bit concerned that you didn’t mention the work of . . .’. If critical
questions are raised too directly or intellectual dissatisfaction expressed
without any credit being expressed, then others are likely to suggest that
the moral codes of politeness have been breached and that rudeness has
been performed.
Practically every utterance, if delivered inappropriately, carries the pos-
sibility of moral censure. If we pitch our voice too highly or too loudly, if
we intervene too quickly or too slowly, then we run the risk of being seen
to infringe the codes of politeness. As such, everyday we practice this con-
versational morality habitually. As we make habitual utterances which have
never been said before, we run the risk of transgressing the morality which
permits such utterance.

RUDENESS AND POLITENESS

This view of morality, as being something which is routinely accomplished

in dialogue, is very different from the Freudian view. For Freud, the
presence of moral restrictions is a sign of the presence of temptation. If
there were no temptation, suggested Freud, then there would be no reason
for moral codes. Moreover, according to Freud, temptations not only have
to be resisted but often they must be repressed: we cannot admit to our-
selves that we have the desires, which we regularly resist, and so the temp-
tations, which morality forbids, must be pushed from consciousness.
A Freudian, viewing the complex codes of conversation and turn-taking,
should ask what conversational temptations are all these codes being
directed against? If complex codes are inbuilt into every utterance, then the
Freudian would see temptations as being ever-present. The stronger the
codes, the more they suggest the pervasiveness of resisted temptation.
Thus, the daily accomplishment of conversation is being stalked by
shameful hidden desire and temptation. One might say that ordinary talk,
conventionally considered as ‘polite’, is somehow keeping at bay, or even
repressing, the temptation of rudeness.
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 209

There are reasons for supposing that the possibility of speaking politely
depends on being able to speak rudely (see Billig, 1997a and in press for
more details). Politeness is not a biological imperative, but children have
to learn the codes and intonations of politeness. The paradox is that as
children learn the codes of politeness so they learn how to be rude.
Parents, or other adults, are frequently correcting children for inappro-
priate talking. They often utter words to the effect of ‘don’t say that, it’s
rude’. In speaking thus the adult is doing two principal things – they are
indicating what is polite (how to speak) and what is rude – what should
not be spoken.
Moreover, they are doing it in a conventionally rude way. Parents tend
talk to children in direct ways which are unacceptable in adult conversa-
tion (for details see Billig in press). ‘Don’t say that, it’s rude’ is not typi-
cally the sort of utterance to be made in adult polite conversation. Thus,
an adult, in so speaking to a child, is not just indicating what rude talk is,
but the adult is exemplifying rudeness. Therefore, as the child learns polite-
ness, it also learns to acquire the dangerous weapons of rudeness. Indeed,
it is not possible to have one without the other.

CHILDREN, RUDENESS AND PLEASURE

Studies of mother-child interaction show that the teaching of language,

morality and polite behaviour is not smooth. Judith Dunn’s work has been
invaluable in this regard. She has demonstrated that the relations between
mother and children between the ages of two and three are especially
fraught, estimating that there are about 11 conflict episodes per hour. At
this age, young children deliberately challenge and resist the authority of
the mother. As the mother instructs the child about rules, including those
of language and politeness, the child breaks them.
Above all, the breaking of rules is a matter of enjoyment. This is
particularly true of the rules of not mentioning bodily functions and
making rude jokes. In such matters, as Judy Dunn shows, children use styles
of talking which are most certainly not copied from the mother. For
example, Dunn (1988) reports of a three year old girl calling an adult visitor
‘Mr Piggyface’ and being told firmly not to use that expression again.
The young child then went round the house, deliberately shouting ‘Mr
Piggyface’ over and again.
This suggests something of which Freud was well aware – there is
pleasure in rudeness. As the child becomes older and is expected to enter
the world of mature conversation, such pleasure must be curtailed. Adult
speakers cannot talk as a two year old, but must become responsible and
polite. They must exchange the habits of indirect questioning for the
pleasure of declaiming ‘Mr Piggyface’.
210 MICHAEL BILLIG

Thus, politeness demands the repression of rudeness and of childish

jokes. In Freudian terms, what is repressed is desired; it is an object of
temptation. Only because the child is told not to shout Mr Piggyface, is
there delight in shouting it. In this respect, the learning of dialogue creates
pleasures and desires, which the child must learn to repress, or ‘grow
out of ’.

JOKES AND RUDENESS

At this point, it might be objected that ‘repressing’ and ‘growing out’ of

pleasures are two very different things. If we grow out of the pleasures,
then we stop desiring those pleasures: they no longer attract us. But if we
repress those childish pleasures, we secretly still desire them, but we
deny these desires even to ourselves. The question to ask is what evidence
is there that the pleasures of rudeness are repressed, rather than grown
out of.
From a Freudian perspective, the most direct evidence comes from jokes.
As Freud realised in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious many
jokes derive their humour from the fact that they express repressed desires,
especially those relating to sex and aggression. Many of the great comic
heroes, from Diogenes of Sinope, to Groucho Marx and John Cleese are
unspeakably rude. Instead of being outraged, by their displays of breaking
the restricting codes of politeness, onlookers greet their antics with loud
signs of pleasures It is as if we would like to do what the comic does.
John Cleese, as Basil Fawlty, not only insults the guests in his hotel, but
he mocks the rules of politeness by insulting through overpoliteness. One
can imagine the outrage if an academic speaker at question-time after a
formal talk, behaved in the manner of Basil Fawlty. But because the joke
is merely a joke, the release is safe – the rules are in fact strengthened by
their breach being defined as just a joke.

REPRESSION AND CONVERSATION

There are several implications which can be drawn from this linkage of
conversation and the idea of repression:
a) Adult conversation is restricting: it makes demands on talkers.
b) There is a habitual need to curtail urges to rebel against these demands.
c) These urges must be repressed, or driven from mind; if speakers are
conscious of the desire to be rude (for example to shout ‘Mr Piggyface’
to one’s fellow conversationalist) then they will be unable carry on
routine, habitual conversations.
d) In consequence, the child who learns to be a moral, ordinary speaker,
must learn to repress.
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 211

e) This does not merely involve repressing the desire to be rude, but
learning to avoid disturbing subjects, changing topics etc., for the
mature speaker must learn the routine rhetoric of dialogic avoidance.

FREUD’S CASES

I have been looking in detail at some of Freud’s classic cases, reinterpreting

them in the light of such concerns (i.e. Billig, 1997b; Billig in press). Not
only do these cases bear re-reading for the light they continue to throw
upon enduring issues in psycho-analytic theory (Spence, 1994), but they
illustrate a further point in relation to the idea that the unconscious is dia-
logically produced. If language is repressive, then even Freud’s own texts
may have their hidden or repressive aspects. More particularly, in drawing
attention to repression, and in revealing its hidden aspects, Freud may have
also been engaging in repressive activity himself.
The case histories can be re-read in order to look for what Freud seems
to overlook. One aspect, which has particular interest for a discursive psy-
chologist, is Freud’s accounts of his own dialogues with his patients. Freud
was especially interested in the ‘big’ symbolism contained in his patient’s
words. A discursive psychologist, by contrast, might look towards the
details of dialogue which Freud seems to ignore – this means looking at
the little words and the rhetorical business which they can accomplish.
One case which I have been looking at is that of Little Hans, the young
child whose development provided Freud with direct evidence for the
Oedipus complex (Freud, 1990). Freud’s account concentrates on Hans’s
desires, most notably his sexual desires for his mother and aggressive
impulses towards his father. According to Freud, Hans represses both sets
of desires. However, if Freud’s account is read carefully especially the notes
which Hans’s father takes of conversations with his young son, it is possible
to see more than the young child’s desires. It is possible to hear his parents
talking to him, often changing the subject, when Hans asks awkward ques-
tions. The parents are instructing him into the conventions of morality,
telling him to be ashamed of certain wishes, to behave and to speak appro-
priately; they even can be heard to project their own desires onto Hans, as
jealous parents, denying their own jealousy and teaching the young boy to
believe that he is being unfairly jealous (Billig, in press).
Hans is also being taught the rhetorical devices of repression. For
example, one can hear him acquiring the rhetorical device of ‘yes but’.
When he asks an awkward question, which raises the issue of parental
desires, his father changes the subject with a ‘yes, but’. He answers the
question ‘yes’ but then dismisses with the ‘but’ and throws the topic back
onto Hans with another question, which he implies is the ‘real’ or ‘impor-
tant’ question’. It is a device, which the young boy can be heard using later.
In this way, the account offered by Freud can be read as an account of a
212 MICHAEL BILLIG

young boy entering a world of dialogue, which makes repressive demands.

He learns that some things are to be talked about and others are shameful.
He learns discursive devices for changing the topics of conversation, and
these discursive devices can be used to change the topics of his own internal
thoughts (for details, see Billig, in press).

SEXUALITY, POLITENESS AND DORA

Freud’s case histories suggest that it is the sexual which is, above all, for-
bidden and is not to be discussed openly. But there is a paradox. Freud in
his texts discusses sex openly; Hans’s parents are Freudians – they are con-
stantly bringing up sexual themes; and in psycho-analytic interviews, sex
is talked about. Freud saw this as a liberation from repression, with the
texts of psycho-analysis providing a non-repressive form of discourse in
which nothing is hidden. Yet, if language is repressive, then these texts,
which are so open about sexuality, might be drawing attention away from
other matters, of which it was even more difficult to speak. In other words,
Freud’s own texts might be creating their own silences.
This can be illustrated by a slightly earlier case than that of Little Hans
– the celebrated case of Dora, which Freud published as ‘Fragment of an
Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ in 1905 (for full details of the analysis,
see Billig, 1997b). Dora, a young woman of eighteen, was showing
symptoms of hysteria. Her family situation was complex, as her family’s
life was intertwined with that of another family, the K’s. Dora’s father, a
domineering man, who insisted that his daughter consult Dr Freud, was
having an affair with Frau K. Dora regularly looked after Frau K’s children.
Her father was regularly conspiring that the two families spend time
together and share holidays. Herr K had been pursuing Dora since she had
been fourteen. On occasion, he had even grabbed her, tried to kiss her,
and entered her bedroom on holiday. At last Dora told her father about Herr
K’s advances. Her father refused to believe her. Dora had been greatly
distressed, showing hysterical symptoms. Her father had wanted Dr Freud
to cure her of this nonsense.
Freud sought to fulfil his remit by locating the cause of Dora’s
‘pathology’ in her unconscious wishes, rather than in her family circum-
stance. He claimed that she really loved Herr K (which she denies and
which Freud takes as sign of resistance). Also, he later suggested that she
had lesbian desires for Frau K, which likewise had been repressed.
Feminist critics have recently criticised Freud for taking an apolitical
stance towards Dora, and ignoring the politics of the family. However, they,
in common with Freud, can be said also to be apolitical, in that their
analyses avoid the outward politics of the time. Freud’s original case report
did not mention that both the doctor and the patient were Jewish (many of
today’s critics overlook the political significance of this). This might not
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 213

seem a relevant detail for a psycho-analytic report today but at the time
Vienna was a deeply anti-Semitic society. Its elected mayor, Karl Lueger,
was an anti-Semitic demagogue, whose party had promised to sack all
Jewish doctors.
At the time when Freud treated Dora, he was at the most isolated point
of his life. He believed he had failed to gain promotion at the University
of Vienna because of anti-Semitism. There were regular boycotts of lectures
by Jewish academics. Freud himself had withdrawn from lecturing, even
to fellow doctors. His only regular audience was the B’nai B’rith, the
Jewish defence organisation.
Dora’s family, like that of Freud, were assimilating Jews, who looked
forward to joining mainstream society (see Decker, 1991, for details). As
with many bourgeois Jews in the Vienna of that time, these hopes included
an identification with German culture. It was a painful identification, for
the culture was deeply anti-Semitic. Sometimes, bourgeois Jews ignored
the anti-Semitism of the culture with which they were identifying.
Sometimes they took on such assumptions, directing them against Ostjuden,
or eastern, non-German-speaking Jews, as if they themselves were not
really Jewish, but the eastern Jews were the real Jews, and the ones to
criticise. One might say that an avoidance was built into the routines of life
and conversation.

FREUD AND DORA’S CONVERSATIONS

This avoidance, it can be argued, even reached into the dialogic routines
of Freud’s consulting room. It is not merely that Freud and Dora do not
seem to have talked about the political situation of the time (Decker, 1991).
Perhaps that is unsurprising. After all, it is the nature of psycho-analytic
conversations that the topics are personal rather than political. Dora seems
to have understood the conversational game. She appears to have talked
readily without undue inhibition. However, there is one point at which the
conversation appears to have come unstuck, as Freud asks a question and
Dora avoids replying.
The moment comes when Freud is interpreting the dream, which in the
published report is presented as ‘the second dream’. Dora says that she
dreamt of going to a strange town. She meets a strange man and asks him
the way to the railway station. She is trying to return home, because
she has heard that her father has died and that all the family are at the
cemetery.
Freud interprets the dream in terms of shameful desires. He claims that
the underlying meaning is based on Dora’s wish to kill her father, in order
to be free to engage in sexual activity. In constructing this interpretation,
Freud brilliantly makes connections between the German words for
cemetery, station and female sexual organs.
214 MICHAEL BILLIG

Given that Freud claimed that dreams were ‘over-determined’, or have

multiple meanings, it is rather surprising that he misses obvious religious
interpretations. He does not offer an interpretation which suggests that Dora
wishes to be freed from her father’s traditions, in order to marry a stranger,
or non-Jew. Jewish themes are indicated by the phrase ‘the cemetery’, to
which the rest of the family have gone. ‘The’ cemetery, in this context,
would be assumed to be a Jewish cemetery (in fact, a year after Freud’s
report was published, Dora, by now married, converted to Protestantism,
along with her husband and infant child).
The most remarkable incident of all occurs when Freud asks about the
strange town in which Dora dreams she is wandering. He links the town
to Dresden, which she had previously visited. She describes that visit, men-
tioning that she visited the art gallery. Freud inquires about the visit. Dora
replies that she stood in front of Raphael’s picture of the Madonna for two
hours. Freud then asks the seemingly obvious and innocuous question: what
had she liked about the picture?
It is at this point that the conversation breaks down. Freud reports that
she could give no clear answer to his question. Finally, she answers, ‘The
Madonna’. Most surprisingly Freud does not ask why she was stuck for
an answer. Nor in his report does he present it as a problem. Quite the
contrary, he seems to dismiss the incident, mentioning in a footnote that
Dora seems to be showing an identification with the Madonna, and that
this represents a culturally approved desire for motherhood and thus, a guilt-
free desire for sexual intercourse. Freud does not apparently see the con-
tradiction in this analysis: if the identification is culturally acceptable, then
why should there be such hesitation?
Of course, the identification in this case was not culturally acceptable.
Freud does not discuss the symbolic meaning of a Jewish girl staring at
the Madonna, as if identifying with the mother of Jesus. If her staring indi-
cates a wish to be a mother, it is a Christian mother (as she, in fact, became).
A whole complex of issues, touching on guilt, betrayal and self-hatred, is
involved. But Freud in his report avoids all this, just as he and Dora in their
conversation had apparently done. It was easier to talk (and write) of sexual
matters, than it was to speak of these matters.
This does not reflect the personal psychology of Freud and Dora. It is
a message of their times and conditions of life. The repressed themes were
part of habits of avoidance, which were maintained by routine conversa-
tions leading in other directions. If the embarrassing topic should intrude
(as it does following Freud’s question about the Madonna), then after a
momentary embarrassment conversation is directed along other paths, and
all is forgotten. But, as with Freudian repression, what is forgotten is not
obliterated, never to return, but it leaves its trace.
 RHETORIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 215

CONCLUSION

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the greatest psychological theory of self-

deception was developed at time and place when collective self-deception
was built into conditions of life. In such conditions, avoidance can seem
natural and rational. By contrast, too unbending a gaze, or too voiced a
sentiment, might be taken as a sign of irrationality. This is illustrated by a
story from Freud’s own family circle.
The youngest of Freud’s five sisters, Adolphine, was considered sweet,
oversensitive and slightly dotty by the rest of the family. Sigmund, in one
of his letters to his wife, had said she had ‘such a great capacity for deep
feeling and alas an all-too-fine sensitiveness’. Sigmund’s son Martin, years
later, was to write how she used to imagine insults as she walked along
the streets. Other members of the family put this down to her silliness,
verging on paranoia. She would say ‘Did you hear what that man said? He
called me a dirty stinking Jewess and said it was time we were all killed’
(see M. Freud, 1957: 16). It was rather a joke with the other Freuds.
Today, it is not possible to dismiss Adolphine. In the most awful way,
she was proved correct. Years later, when the Nazis invaded Vienna, Freud
was able to escape in time. So too was Dora, whom Freud had not seen
for years. But Adolphine and three other sisters had no escape, being taken
to the camps from which they were never to return. Even Sigmund Freud,
justifiably praised for hearing things which few previously had dared to
hear, had not been able to bring himself to hear what his youngest sister,
not only heard, but had understood.

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