Learning about/from psychoanalysis

“Aggression, this second great vital force beside libido, had been identified by Freud variously –at least since the topic pressed itself upon his attention with the events of World War I –as an equally powerful and parallel drive to libido, or one at odds with libido and providing a countervailing pressure, or one which got peculiarly mixed up with and fused with libido (or vice versa, as libido got fused with aggression), or a phenomenon which grew in proportion as libidinal aims were thwarted.-hard to think about views of aggression not being informed by their intrinsic association with masculinity, which is closely associated with sexuality  “in no other postwar national context would the wider public reception of psychoanalysis as a whole, in its dual nature as a clinical and culturally critical enterprise, be so strongly shaped by debates not over sexual desire and behavior but rather over the vagaries and vicissitudes of human aggression.”-because of the ties to evolution and survival“One strand of public fascination with these texts clearly had to do with a wave of interest in biological as opposed to sociological explanations of human nature –and not least with a desire to re-secure traditional notions of gender in an era of rapidly changing social roles for men and women.”“It had two main components: aggression was ubiquitous in animals and in people (i.e., it was not just a German specialty). And more importantly: aggression was a force for good. All cultural progress and effective activity, as well as, and however counterintuitively, the treasured bonds of deep friendship and marital love, had roots in the aggressive instinct.” – we can root anything in the aggressive instinct because it’s tied to survival, this is very different from how aggression is conceptualized and acted on, which is fascinating when considering from a psychoanalytic lens that often deals with gender based violence“Freud who had insisted that humans were not by nature good; this version, however paradoxically, was a co- production of Lorenz’s supporters with those of his critics who could not accept the idea of aggression as a drive at all and instead proposed alternate models of human behavior which more strongly emphasized social and political factors.”“Rather, the question became which Freud would be promoted and invoked in order to advance a variety of political agendas . At the same time, all the previously assumed alignments between theoretical framework and political implications got scrambled. The controversies, in short, sparked both a repositioning of psychoanalysis within West German culture and a reconsideration of what exactly the content of psychoanalysis might be.”-continuing on the tradition of taking what you like and repurposing it to match what you desire“Mitscherlich’s thinking is paralyzed by the unresolved contradictions of Freud’s drive- dualism . In the final analysis, then, the decisive evils are after all only secondarily caused by society, because ‘evil,’ hate , and pleasure in destruction are ineradicably biologically anchored in human nature”-dislike the idea that aggression is inborn as well as inevitable; there has to be a choice; because what is life without choice or at least the illusion of choice“The escalation of the confl icts over the value and causes of aggression, however, had another effect as well, for they inadvertently triggered a sarcastic backlash in the mainstream media against what rapidly came to seem like the New Left’s severe naiveté about the dark sides of human nature. “-interesting when you consider the reading on how paranoia is now the affliction experienced by the left“while nonetheless spending the bulk of his text accumulating evidence that a culture based in sexual repression exponentially fueled the prevalence of aggression.” -have to agree that part of this response to sexual repression is that aggression is taught as an alternative outlet and is legitimized“(including its erstwhile member Erich Fromm, who had been one of the first to theorize the impact of feelings of powerlessness):  how the increasing vulnerability experienced by individuals in a competitive- technological society exacerbated aggression and diminished individuals’ capacity for political resistance”““The talk of an aggression- drive is perilous; it encourages the further spread of aggressive behavioral tendencies and heightens the danger of war in international relations.” -once again purporting a notion that if you don’t talk about something it ceases to exist“we do not know for certain whether there is such a thing as primary destructivity (a genuine ‘death drive’) or whether the natural pleasure of aggression is transformed into the pleasure of inflicting pain only by experiences of impotence, humiliation, and loss of self- esteem.”“In short, and however counterintuitive this may seem, despite the best efforts of Alexander Mitscherlich, through a complex set of circumstances, it was –irony of ironies –an ex- Nazi (Lorenz) who succeeded in provoking the conversation that initially brought psychoanalysis back to post- Nazi Germany”“Yet, as late as 2009, a reviewer of Dehli was able summarily to declare that, although Mitscherlich was “one of the most influential psychoanalysts after 1945,” “nowadays Alexander Mitscherlich (1908– 1982) is almost entirely forgotten,” and to wonder whether that forgetting was caused by the fact that his book titles had become slogans –for which no one remembered the actual content –or whether his erstwhile ubiquity and influence had depended on his personal charisma and public presence far more than on his writings.”