I DON’T have the mental capacity to refer to Sydney King (he is 99) by his adopted name of Eusi Kwayana.
Given how Sydney King reared his racial head after March 2020, I just don’t have the mental readiness to refer to him as Eusi Kwayana. I prefer Sydney King. I think March 2020 showed that in Kwayana, Sydney King was always there and never went away.

The man the post-war generation knew as Sydney King who preached racially inspiring doctrines in Guyana never was Eusi Kwayana but was always Sydney King, the partitionist who wanted Guyana to be split into an Indian half and an African half.

My mother and mother-in-law who knew about a racial preacher in the 1960s named Sydney King, always said to me that he will always be Sydney King. I use to defend him when they told me to be aware of Sydney King.

But those old people without any fancy education knew what they were talking about. They are long gone but once the name Eusi Kwayana comes up, I always remember their warning to the young misguided, idealistic idiot that I was.
Sydney was a perfectionist in the Freudian methodology of repression of the expressions of the ID.

Freud explained that we escape the over-powering presence of the ID through the defence mechanism of repression. We block out the compelling drives that we do not want to be part of our reality so we repress them.

But Freud, in a brilliant way, explained that there comes an incident or an event or a moment when repression fails and the ID brings to the conscious mind the things we repressed for so long. This is where Freud equals Karl Marx in Marx’s fantastic discovery of surplus value.

For Marx, there will always be a surplus that the employer takes from labour which should be shared with labour. Inherent then in capitalism is exploitation. Central to understanding the mind is repression. It is central to psychoanalysis.

Freud argues that in that though we can achieve permanent, successful repression, there will come a time, no matter how long in the life of an individual, that something triggers the release of the repressed instincts.

I saw a movie when I was very young named X, Y and Zee with the power couple of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Though made in 1972, there hasn’t been a movie made since then that shows how irrepressible is the ID and that the repressed ID may rise to the surface one day and reveal who we really are.

The racial instinct inherent in King was repressed for almost 50 years in which Eusi Kwayana replaced Sydney King. Freud also refers to the mechanism of sublimation. Humans sublimate the repressing impulses in the ID by transferring them into a reality that we want to have in our mind.

We are all escapists according to Freud because we repress the ID and sublimate it into a new existence. Freud calls this “higher social valuation.” Higher social valuation can take countless forms.

Kwayana repressed then sublimated his racial instincts by losing himself into multi-ethnic organisations of which the Working People’s Alliance stands out. From 1974 onwards, Sydney King repressed and sublimated his subconscious instincts into a plethora of pro-democracy organisations from which a solid legacy was born. His denunciation of Forbes Burnham and his embrace of Walter Rodney were high moments in the sublimation process.

As in the movie, X, Y and Zee, a moment comes when the EGO and SUPER-EGO are unable to prevent the ID from coming to the surface. Most humans live successful lives which the mechanisms of repression and sublimation allow them to do. But some people have their moments when what was repressed for so long comes to the surface.

In Sydney’s case it was the March 2020 election. He couldn’t control himself. He could not put the genie back in the bottle. The loss of power in 2020 by a predominantly African party triggered the long repressed racial instinct. He came up with one silly excuse after another to avoid acknowledging that the election was free and fair and that the PPP won.

The anti-PPP hatred was always there some of it Sydney transferred to Walter Rodney and Rupert Roopnaraine.
As the March moved into April and the ensuing months ticked off, Sydney’s acceptance of rigged election was backed up by some awfully silly reasoning.

In a series of exchange with me, he replied saying he cannot comment on things in Guyana from far away as if he did not know about live-streaming. To this day, at age 99, Sydney cannot bring himself to accept Indians in government. And since the ID now dominates the EGO, he never will.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.