This article aims to reflect on the possible contributions of psychoanalysis in relation to severely disturbed patients by means of the presentation of a clinical case. Beginning with the family history, the evolutionary process of the symptoms and identification movements of the patient are analysed. The observation of the transference dynamics is emphasised, showing how the desire of the analyst and his privileged listening will allow the patient some level of possible subjective structure.
This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of Erich Fromm’s concept of narcissism as it relates to the emergence, sustenance, and resolution of authoritarian violence. The discussion is first placed within the methodological debate over the analytic operations that are required for an adequate understanding of authoritarian violence, explaining why a psychoanalytic perspective is necessary. The focus then shifts to Fromm’s take on the Freudian concept of narcissism, before proceeding to explore in some depth his account of the symbolic mechanisms and contextual climate that must combine in practice in order for narcissistic energies to be channeled into authoritarianism and violence. Attention in this regard is paid both to the populace and governing elites. The article concludes with a short exposition of Fromm’s notion of benign narcissism, from its specific content to the conditions of its possibility.
This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of Erich Fromm’s concept of narcissism as it relates to the emergence, sustenance, and resolution of authoritarian violence. The discussion is first placed within the methodological debate over the analytic operations that are required for an adequate understanding of authoritarian violence, explaining why a psychoanalytic perspective is necessary. The focus then shifts to Fromm’s take on the Freudian concept of narcissism, before proceeding to explore in some depth his account of the symbolic mechanisms and contextual climate that must combine in practice in order for narcissistic energies to be channeled into authoritarianism and violence. Attention in this regard is paid both to the populace and governing elites. The article concludes with a short exposition of Fromm’s notion of benign narcissism, from its specific content to the conditions of its possibility.
Why is it that imprisonment has undergone an explosive growth in the USA and Britain over the last three decades against the background of falling crime rates in both countries? And why has this development met with a significant and escalating degree of support among the public? To the extent that governing elites on either side of the Atlantic have been eliciting public support for their authority by inducing concerns about issues of crime and punishment, what explains the selection of crime as a means to this effect, and in what precise ways do crime and punishment fulfil their hidden political function? Moreover, how do Americans and Britons legitimate their consent to objectively irrational policies and the elites responsible for their formulation? In seeking to advance the study of these questions, the present article rediscovers the method and key findings of Erich Fromm’s ‘materialistic psychoanalysis’, bringing them to bear upon insights produced by political economies of contemporary punishment and related scholarship. Particular attention is paid to the hitherto understudied themes of the political production of middle-class support for punitive penal policies under conditions of neoliberal capitalism, and the crucial role played in this process by the privileged position accorded to violent street crime in the public domain.
l objetivo de este artículo es realizar una contribución tanto sustantiva como epistemológica al estudio de la punitividad estatal y pública. Epistemológicamente, se desarrolla un argumento a favor de la utilización del psicoanálisis y especialmente la vertiente >materialista< de Fromm. Sustantivamente y por medio de convocar el psicoanálisis frommiano a dialogar con las visiones de las economías políticas del castigo contemporáneo, el objetivo es trazar las formas en las que la penalidad contribuye a un proyecto más amplio de dominación estatal sobre el público en los Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña bajo las condiciones del capitalismo neoliberal. Se le presta particular atención en este sentido a los temas poco estudiados hasta aquí de la producción política del apoyo de las clases medias a las políticas punitivas y el rol crucial que ha jugado en este proceso la posición privilegiada otorgada al delito violento de la calle en el dominio público. El artículo argumenta que la penalidad neoliberal y sus efectos políticos requieren necesariamente lo que ha sido típicamente teorizado como los lenguajes y operaciones moralmente neutrales y desapasionadas del gerencialismo. Concluye reclamando un quiebre con respecto a los dos enfoques dominantes acerca de la responsabilidad de las elites por la punitividad pública: >punitividad populista< y >populismo penal<. A partir del trabajo de Fromm sobre el carácter social de las clases dominantes, se plantea que la auto legitimación y sus bases narcisistas son claves para comprender las acciones e inacciones de las elites.