The Psychoanalysis of Skiing

The importance that sport has generally acquired in modern life is a significant phenomenon, and is one of the markers of the shift of the Western soul towards very different interests from those that were predominant in the 19th century. Modern sport would therefore deserve a dedicated study. Moreover, it would be interesting to compare modern sport and its general significance with its counterpart in the ancient Western, Greek and Roman world, as well as in non-European civilisations.

As regards this second point, I have provided some essential points of reference in another work of mine.75 As for modern sport, I only wish to draw attention here to one particular variety of it, namely skiing. This sport is a rather recent trend. In Nordic countries skiing had enjoyed a certain popularity, yet not as a real sport (it apparently only made its début as a sport at Oslo in 1870, when people from Telemark used this means of transport to outstrip their opponents in a race, causing a general stir);76 rather, skiing was used as a practical device, not unlike sledges and poles, which came in handy in areas that were covered in snow for much of the year. By contrast, the enjoyment of skiing in itself, as a thrilling activity, only spread among the younger generations in major non-Nordic Western countries, including Britain, in recent times — roughly, in the inter-war period. The sudden success and great popularity of this sport, and the spontaneous interest and enthusiasm which men and women alike display toward it, are distinctive elements that beg the question of whether this phenomenon may be due not only to extrinsic factors but also to the general orientation of modern life.

Let us explore this possibility by asking ourselves: what is the essential psychological trait associated with skiing as a sport? What is the ‘moment’ in this sport to which everything else, in most cases, is subordinated? The answer is quite obvious: the descent. This emerges quite clearly when we compare this to the salient point and meaning of another sport that is practised in largely the same environment as skiing, namely mountaineering.

In mountaineering the essential element, the focus of interest of the sport, is constituted by the act of ascending; in skiing this instead corresponds to descending. The dominant motif in mountaineering is conquest; the attainment of the peak, the point beyond which one cannot go any higher, marks the end of the truly interesting stage for the rock or ice-wall climber (let us leave aside here the technical-acrobatic deviations displayed by a certain kind of recent mountaineering). The opposite takes place in the case of skiing: if one ascends, this is mostly in order to descend.

The hours of toil required to reach a certain altitude are only faced in order to then take the ‘downhill run’, the Abfahrt, the swift skiing descent.77 Thus in the more modern and fashionable winter sport stations the problem has been solved by building cableways, chair lifts and sledge lifts that meet the real interest of skiers by effortlessly taking them up, allowing them then to ski down in a few minutes and to take the same cableway — or a different one — once again in order to face another descent, until they have had enough. Consequently, whereas mountaineering is characterised by the thrill of the ascent, as a struggle and conquest, the sport of skiing is characterised by the thrill of descent with its speed and, if one may put it so, its fall time.
This last point is worth emphasising. A person’s way of relating to his or her own body varies significantly from mountaineering to skiing.

Mountaineering entails a far more direct perception of one’s own body, with acts of balancing, efforts, thrusts and moves that require complete control over the body, and careful and well-planned manoeuvres to be performed in relation to the various challenges posed by climbing and ascending, by choosing and clinging to a handhold, and by the resistance of a step cut into the ice. In skiing we find something quite different: a person’s way of relating to his or her own body is certainly subject to the force of gravity and may be compared to the relation between a car driven at a certain speed and its driver; once he has ‘set off’, the skier must do one thing alone: guide himself through appropriate movements in order to regulate his speed and direction. This will lead him to master his reflexes (making them instinctive, reliable and quick after much taxing training), thereby allowing him to control his descent, more or less like a driver who enjoys speeding down a street filled with pedestrians and other vehicles without slowing down, using his quick reflexes to avoid this or that obstacle and brush past it, almost playfully, before moving on to continue his race. The impression produced by a skilled skier is precisely of this sort.

As regards the more inward aspect of the phenomenon, i.e. what it ultimately gives the human spirit, it is worth recalling the impression felt by someone who puts on a pair of skies for the first time. This is the impression of having the ground slip away from under one’s feet, of falling. The same feeling resurfaces when one strives to master the most difficult forms of this sport: swift downhill runs or jumps. Hence, I believe it is possible to argue that the deepest meaning of skiing lies in the following fact: the instinctual feeling of physical fear, with the reflex it triggers of withdrawing or hanging onto something, is overcome and transformed into a feeling of elation and pleasure, and developed into the impulse of going ever faster and playing in various different ways with the speed and acceleration that the force of gravity exerts on bodies. In this respect, skiing may be defined as the technique, game, and thrill of falling. By practising this sport, one develops a certain physical daring or fearlessness, but of a particular sort, quite distinct from the daring of the mountaineer, or even opposite to it in terms of its meaning: we may well say that it is an essentially ‘modern’ kind of daring.

The above term encapsulates not only the symbolic meaning of the sport of skiing, but probably the deep, underlying reason for its sudden popularity as well. Of all the many types of sport, skiing ranks among those most devoid of any relation to the symbols of the previous world-view. So to draw upon the comparison we made previously, whereas the ancient traditions of all peoples are replete with symbols related to the mountain as the goal of an ascent and site of transfiguration — despite the fact that mountaineering was not really practised in ancient times at all — they contain nothing that may be associated with the sport of skiing.78 It is essentially the ‘modern’ soul that feels at ease with this sport: the soul drunk with speed, ‘becoming’, and accelerating or indeed frantic motion — what until recently was praised as the motion of ‘progress’ and ‘intense living’, and which has in fact been nothing but a kind of collapse and downfall. The thrill of this motion, combined with a cerebral and abstract feeling that one is in control of forces which have been unleashed and which one really no longer possesses, is typical of the modern way in which the Ego grasps the sharpest perception of itself. I believe that this existential orientation, be it only as a reflection, contributes to the enthusiasm for skiing as a sport and that it distinguishes it in particular from mountaineering — conceived as a physical and sporting expression of the opposite symbol, the symbol of ascending, elevating oneself, and conquering the forces of gravity, which is to say the forces at work in a fall.

The acknowledgement of all this does not necessarily lead to a particular value judgement. Indeed, from a more external perspective, one may assign skiing the same recognition that one assigns certain aspects of that ‘naturism’ which has become popular in recent times: as a winter sport, when practised seriously (without the snobbishness and foolishness associated with the fashionable centres of such sport, with their carnivalesque clothes, and all the rest), skiing can certainly help compensate, in a way, for the damage inflicted on many men’s organism nowadays by life in big cities, as well as contribute to a certain psycho-physical activation in the young. But even if one were to directly perceive the inner side of the enthusiasm for skiing in the problematic terms I have just outlined, this — at least in the case of a certain differentiated human type — is not bound to be an entirely negative thing. The maxim which applies to such a type of person, especially in the present day, may also apply within the profane domain of skiing: no experience is to be avoided, but everything must be experienced, yet in a detached way. One is to keep abreast of the wave, confirming one’s freedom.

The Bow and the Club by Julius Evola