The Sociological Imagination
(1993)
Social Structure and Anomie
(1993)
The Self, the I, and the Me
(1993)
This paper was presented at a Mind and Life seminar arranged by the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, in October 1992, the theme being >Sleeping, dreaming and dying<. The first part of this paper summarises Freud's theories on sleeping and dreaming, and the relation of dream theory to the theory of the life and death instincts. Part two presents a clinical vignette including a dream of the analysand as well as a dream of the analyst to illustrate the creative potentiality of dream analysis. Part three is a discussion of the theories of sleep and dream after Freud. Attention is drawn to Geza Roheim's idea of dreaming as an essential elemental force which revitalizes every human being in his relation to himself and others. Reference is also made to Dadoun's concept of dreaming as a possible source of the creation of sexuality and desire rather than the other way round as Freud conceived of it. Bertram Lewin's concept of sleep as a blank screen upon which dream scenes are projected and its link with the primitive image of the >breast mother< is also discussed as well as certain of Winnicott's concepts.
Starting with the credo that it is the healthy part of the personality that allows a person to be creative, the author investigates factors behind failures to create. First the relation to the external world is considered, followed by a more detailed discussion of factors pertaining to the internal world: the role of pregenital sexuality, and the importance of the universal bisexual wishes. Possible reasons for differences between the sexes are indicated and discussed in relation to clinical material. Main conclusions are: 1. In a sense, all creative acts may be conceptualized as a fusion of the masculine and feminine elements in our psychic structure. If this unconsciously represents stealing the generative powers of the parents, creative activity may be experienced as a transgression and thus become a cause of inhibition. 2. to create is to claim one's right to separate existence and individual identity. This too may be fantasized as a transgression if the creative act is experienced as an attack on the primitive maternal image and may in turn become a source of severe inhibition.
Class Struggle
(1993)
Labour-Power and Capital
(1993)
The Fetishism of Commodities
(1993)
The Values of Commodities
(1993)
On Imperialism in India
(1993)
Estranged Labour
(1993)
Camera Obscura
(1993)
Repressive Desublimation
(1993)
The Postmodern Condition
(1993)
>The Social Roots of Modern Science<: This discussion is predicated on the following theses: - Modern science, and especially physics as it has developed since Galileo and Newton, is not value-neutral. It is therefore not merely science’s practical outlets and technological spinoffs that embody the interests, values and weltanschauung of its practitioners. Rather its specific mode of grappling with nature is, both in its methodology and basic concepts, interest- and value-laden from the outset; moreover, science is rooted in a particular view of the world. The view of the world in which science is grounded, and hence also its fundamental concepts, are socially mediated historical developments. It is from basic social structures, especially those in the socio-economic sphere, that such scientific concepts as space and time, the knowing subject, and objectivized nature, have been won, i.e. they have derived from them central aspects and structural features of their interpretive edifice. The present attempt at a materialistic explanation of modern science seeks to answer the question of how scientific theory formation and experimentation,science’s characteristic mode of grappling with nature, can be construed as an historically conditioned way of conceiving nature. Here Alfred Sohn-Rethals’ theory, according to which economic modalities are >reflected< in human consciousness, proves too narrow an answer. This article mainly draws on Fromm’s pivotal concept of >social character<. Applying the latter to the problem of deriving the basic concepts of natural science, the author offers the following answer: To each specific historically conditioned mode of production there pertains a specific social character – the ego must accept what is incumbent on it, as a social actor, to secure the preservation of society. It is in need of an orientational framework, an object of reverence, an appropriate identity. As far as the ego’s relation to nature within a given production modality is concerned, the image of nature and the basic concepts of natural science communicate an orientational framework to the ego, together with the necessary means, to stabilize the identity required by the production modality.
Schreber's fantasy of turning into a woman to be fertilized by God and produce a new race of mankind was a major motive for Superintendent of Sonnenstein, Dr Guido Weber, to maintain that Schreber was a case of chronic and incurable paranoia and unfit for life in society, failing to see the difference between the concrete and the metaphorical. Schreber not only proved Weber wrong, but prophetically anticipated a number of issues in current awareness of gender psychology and gender roles in society. – In Schreber's system the two principal elements of his delusions (his transformation into a woman and his favored relation to God) are linked by the assumption of a feminine attitude towarh God. It will be our task to show that there is an essential genetic relation between these two elements. Otherwise we shall be like a man holding a sieve under a he-goat while some one else milks it.
The Structural Study of Myth
(1993)
What Is to Be Done?
(1993)
The Idea of the Postmodern
(1993)
The Golden Moment: 1945-1963
(1993)
The Depth of the Field
(1993)
The author comments on Horst Petri's case presentation and gives reasons why he sees social criticism within the process of interpretation as inappropriate. Firstly he contradicts Petri's view of the severity of his patient's illness. He thinks a supportive therapy was not appropriate and he would have treated her by using conflict centered interpretations. Secondly he assumes that the analyst's social criticism forms an alliance with the analysand which excludes essential issues from the analytic work. And thirdly he reminds us that psychoanalysis doesn't spare a supposedly progressive attitude from criticism. Within the framework of psychoanalytic theory, the relativity of all value judgements forbids the analyst to tie himself down in the way Petri suggests.
The New Liberalism
(1993)
Orgontherapie für Babys
(1993)
>The Humanization of Everyday Life. An Analysis of the Ethics of the Social Professions<: If ethical analysis is to be of any service in elaborating a theory of the social professions, it must not simply be based on the patron-client relationship. Of greater importance are rudimentary social-political and universal ethical maxims, both of which imply a demand for social justice construed as working towards a social state – together with Albert Schweizer's >reverence for life< and Erich Fromm's >biophilia< (in the sense of dealing considerately with nature). Since most social occupations in present-day society are located in the service sector, the influence of commodification (>commodities always come with a price tab attached<) must be as much reflected in the worker's relation to the client as the possibility of abuse and remaining in tutelage. Finally speaking, institutional ties to colleagues and co-workers (>teamwork<) – as well as >looking after oneself< (in the sense of preserving one's psychic balance), work on the >patron syndrome< (W. Schmidtbauer), and the prevention of >burn-out< – are also in need of consideration. In all of these, the goal of a practical ethic for the social occupations not only consists in promoting the most >mature< possible standards of professional behavior; it also involves freeing the way for a showdown with compulsions and deformations that are deeply rooted in the socially conditioned motivational and demand structure, i.e. Erich Fromm's >social character<. Emancipating oneself from these compulsions is, to be sure, not easy and never completely successful – but achieving insight is the first step to liberation.
In his comment on Teurnell's paper >The Piggle—a sexually abused girl?< the author points to the risk of organizing a complicated clinical material around one single idea and briefly describes other ways of understanding the material in Winnicott's book. To the author's mind, the richness and depth of the material and the subtleness and aesthetics of the interplay between Winnicott and the Piggle, in Teurnell's way of reading, collapse into one single question: the possibility of a sexual trauma. At the end of the comment the role of the Piggle's father is shortly discussed.
Doslov
(1993)
The Self and Its Selves
(1993)
Black Power and Stokely
(1993)
Whither Postmodernism?
(1993)
The End of the Modern Era
(1993)
>The Meaning of Work in a Market Economy<: Work has both an economic and a human value. The latter value is downplayed though in capitalist market economies, since these are based on the expropriation of labor, rather than on the self-fulfillment of the workforce. However, entrepreneurial manipulation of labor as a production factor is today tempered, to an extent at least, by an increased need for social integration within the firm or on the factory floor. From the worker's perspective too, work is not a matter a choice but of hard economic necessity. Most contracted activities performed by workers for remuneration are alienated (on several different levels). The author advances the thesis that proprietors are increasingly discovering an interest in having >self-determined< individuals on their staff. This development is, however, problematic if it means, in concrete terms, that individuals are now expected to internalize formerly external mechanisms of exploitation (a dominance-oriented culture, surveillance, ecological indifference, a technology-heavy approach). Yet this development has another aspect: it could also provide real gains in the struggle for greater onthe- job freedom. Both on the individual and collective level, it could end up giving workers greater room for maneuver.
Emancipatory Knowledge
(1993)
Religious and ethnic ideologies are used for the justification of hatred, violence and destructivity which we today see all over the world. In the efforts to understand and undermine the structure and functioning of those forces, which cause death and suffering to so many human beings, and threaten to dissolve the sense of humanness in large groups, psychoanalysts have not contributed to any significant extent. The Declaration of the German Psychoanalytical Society on Violence, Hatred of Foreigners and Racism, which was published in this journal, vol. 2, No 1, 1993, is a move in the direction of taking more responsibility on our part. Psychoanalysts should have illuminating things to say on these phenomena based on our experiences in working with unconscious processes. One of those who has unfolded an understanding of racism is Béla Grunberger. We are grateful that he has given us permission to reprint his article >On Narcissism, Aggressivity and Anti-Semitism<. In this short paper he vividly, and with a few bold lines, dissects the narcissistic roots of racial and religious violence.
The potential of psychoanalysis as social criticism is explored in the context of the major social divides of gender, sexual orientation, race, social class, and ethnicity. It is argued that these divides play central roles in constructing individual psyches, and that their influence is inseparable from other social-familial forces. Further, analyst and patient alike, inevitably enact the imperatives of class, race, gender, and sexuality in the analytic dyad. It is crucial that psychoanalytic theory be extended to account for the formative power of these cultural categories both in the construction of individual identity, and on the course of analytic work. Further, individual psychoanalysts must be aware of cultural countertransference in the analytic engagement. Finally, as a profession we have an obligation publicly to oppose the destructive imperatives of our economic, political, and social systems in the interest of individual and community psychic well-being.