What a wild ride through psychoanalyses of Nazism...Lorenz. What a guy. Aggression as a universal human trait: sure, absolutely, it has an evolutionary purpose which is activated when the Group is threatened in some way, in order to protect the In-group from some Other or Out-group. A base survival drive which is dependent on increases in stress hormones and a genetic legacy of brute, physical domination in non-linguistic species like our ape cousins. An excuse for attempts at genocide? Not so much; we can't just accept or tolerate violence on the basis of it being a naturally occuring drive - so are self-discipline, critical thought, peace building, etc. But the counter arguments from the Left... it's also not fair to assess aggression as purely derivative of sexual repression and general frustration, which ignores self-restraint completely and diminishes the complexity of Nazi and eugenic ideology and the hegemonic processes that allowed them to gain power. Enter Mitscherlich! Discourse is a bit less reductive - aggression is natural and inevitable, AND I don't know that any attempts to relieve the general populace of their communal guilt should have been a focus. Quite simply, growth comes from those moments of discomfort, and if Germans were able to live with themselves and continue leading normal lives while participating in or turning a blind eye to the atrocities of the Third Reich, then they should have also been able to handle and process the guilt felt afterwards without needing it to be validated scientifically or given a free pass out of that guilt. It really makes me wonder about the evolutionary purpose of guilt and shame, the processes of which I apparently didn't internalize as well as others during that course. Or, rather than the purpose of guilt and shame, the nature of how it is felt, expressed, handled, and why we feel the need to assuage guilt if it, like aggression, is naturally occuring. This actually reminds me a bit of research that recently came out demonstrating how meditation and mindfulness can effectively produce narcissistic tendencies resulting from the core messages to: not judge oneself for normal human thoughts and emotions; that we are all responsible for our individual feelings; etc. This mentality essentially produces a form of escapism from guilt, shame, or responsibility for our actions towards others.It was really interesting to me how the discourse between the multitude of readings of classical Freudian theory created a rich dialectic in and of itself - a 'war' between the return of psychoanalysis to Germany in order to deal with trauma (later PTSD) which it wasn't quite prepared to dp and the overwhelming evidence for trauma. It seems like these opposing forces created their own new [subset? subgenre? topic? concept?] of psychoanalysis regarding trauma, as well as a sort of meta-analysis in which psychoanalysis ends up being needed to unpack the process of attempts at psychoanalyzing trauma in a culture that is practiced in stiff upper lipping and turning away from the ugly parts of itself. "aggression...an equally powerful and parallel drive to libido, or one at odds with libido and providing a coutnervailing pressure, or one which got peculiarly mixed up with and fused with libido...or a phenomenon which grew in proportion as libidinal aims were thwarted." (Herzog, p. 124). "'the problem of the aggressive or death drive,' that 'I can no longer manage without assuming this basic drive, either psychologically or biologically.'" (Freud, 1930 as cited in Herzog, p.124)"On Aggression, after all, as the original German title indicated, was a vigrous defense of aggression as by no means always a force for evil...aggression was ubiquitous in animals and in people...And more importantly: aggression was a force for good. All cultural progress and effective activity, as well as, and howver counterintertuitively, the treasured bonds of deep friendship and martial love, had roots in the aggressive instinct...Lorenz was eager to see the aggressive drive as life-preserving and life-enhancing," (Herzog, p. 126)
- Huge, many, loud issues with this conception, obviously. Yes, the aggression "drive" has a survival purpose, but it is also well documented in evolutionary psychology (as well as many other disciplines) to often reach a point of diminishing returns - this, one of the many problems that stress hormones and neurological chemical production and regulation produce, now endlessly studied by medical and psychological researchers. How much Lorenz would have to look away in order not to discuss the line which is so easily and frequently crossed in violence - continuing to strike after a fight has been won, the seductive power of, well, power, and so on.
The multitude of interpretations of Freud, and attempted/possible applications, by both the far right and far left, and everyone in between, really points, I think, to the fact that while we can herald certain individuals as theorists, what they really produce seems to be an unending and enduring discourse - rather than providing a 'correct' framework for understanding a phenomena, the power of Freud seems to be in the dialectics produced around these concepts which are taken up over decades and centuries, cross culturally, cross temporally, producing innumerable new discourses on an ever expanding range of topics. Herzog notes this about Mitscherlich as well, that his "strategic genius lay not least precisely in an ability to leave the theoretical questions open." (p.127)"Freud was said to have a 'dirty fantasty' and an 'Asiatic world view,' and psychoanalysis was deemed both to contain 'nothing original' - for to claim otherwise would be 'to give too much honor to the unproductivity of the Jewish race' - and to be 'nothing other than the Jewish nation's rape of Western culture.'" (p. 128)
- I wish Herzog had spent some time unpacking this - she notes in the conclusion that Lorenz's Nazi party affiliation and eugenecist ideology continue to be debated among scholars as having an influence on the quality of his science, and I think that this rhetoric she cites is a prime example of how that fact cannot be ignored.
- 'Dirty' and uncleanliness or lack of hygeine are well documented rhetorical tools used to perpetuate discrimination against Jewish communities, despite all evidence pointing to the opposite (quite a lot of Jewish liturgy on cleanliness practices...)
- the use of 'Asiatic' to represent Jewish ideology or culture was a rhetorical device used to promote the Otherness of Jews, and also points to the fact that, at that point in history, Jews were very much considered a race and ethnicity, not just a religion, which points to how any privilege of whiteness was mediated and diminished by ethnic status
- 'unproductivity' and lack of industriousness / burden to the states social and economic programs were major narratives used by the Nazi party to separate Jews as a group and create a cultural belief that necessitated and justified the creation of labor camps in order to correct the 'lazy Jew' problem
- I don't think the word rape needs any further explanation
- The eugenicist language used by individuals with power in Nazi Germany cannot be separated from the theories and science they produced, and to argue otherwise necessitates yet another psychoanalysis of those scholars
It is also very suspect to me that Lorenz continued, until his final days, to extend this ideology to other issues such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and reproduction among 'ethical' and 'unethical' people. I appreciated the comparison by Lifton to post-Vietnam and post-Nixon America, "precisely the dynamics of denial and defense that Lifton was naming also blocked any immediate uptake or sense that the lessons could be applied domestically within the USA." (Herzog, p. 149).
- Americans always seem to have a neat propensity towards cognitive dissonance, though it can be argued that this is true of all hegemonies. Those in power always believe their cause to be just and moral.
The dialectic discussed seems to most importantly impact future/current political discussions, such as that of Christa Rohde-Dachser: "she explored the patriarchal socializaiton and unconscious fantasies - as well as repressions, primitive defenses, and disavowals - shaping Freud's own and subsequent psychanalysts' understanding not only of ideas about gender but also of a broad variety of core psychoanalytic concepts." (p. 150).
- I would have enjoyed more discussion of other descendants who came out of this discourse, because it seems to be quite applicable to queer theory, gender studies, feminist and eco-feminist critique, critical race theory, etc. Perhaps this was in the rest of the book?