Théorie du genre et lavage de cerveau

Guillaume Faye

 

Ex: http://www.gfaye.com

Mme Vallaud-Belkacem, chargée du ”Droit des femmes” au gouvernement, c’est-à-dire de la propagande féministe (1),    entend faire enseigner la ”théorie du genre” à l’école et ce, dès le plus jeune âge. Selon un rapport qui lui a été remis par le lobby des dingos – le même qui a pondu le rapport à Matignon sur la fin de l’”intégration” et de l’identité française–, il s’agit  de « lutter contre les stéréotypes filles-garçons, un enjeu d’égalité et de mixité dès l’enfance ». Les stéréotypes, vous l’avez compris, c’est de penser que les filles sont différentes des garçons, et réciproquement.

M. Olivier Vial, porte-parole de l’Observatoire de la théorie du genre, déclarait, confirmant le caractère soft-totalitaire de l’initiative : « c’est juste un début de propagande douce : on va essayer par une série de micro incitations insidieuses de guider le comportement des gens et de remplacer peu à peu un modèle de société par un autre ». L’entreprise a les mêmes racines idéologiques que le communisme totalitaire : construire l’homme nouveau utopique contre la nature. Il importe d’éradiquer en force les différences hommes/femmes dans l’esprit des enfants. Masculiniser les filles, féminiser les garçons, construire l’être androgyne.

Tout un arsenal est prévu pour lessiver le cerveau des jeunes enfants, afin, selon le rapport précité, de « permettre aux jeunes d’envisager un parcours atypique au regard de leur sexe ».  Comprendre : faire entrer dans la tête des jeunes garçons qu’il est parfaitement normal et positif  de faire guili-guili avec un autre garçon. Car derrière cette initiative gouvernementale, il y a en embuscade le lobby homo masculin qui veut faire des adeptes et recruter sa chair fraiche.

Le rapport jargonnant entend, contre les « stéréotypes de genre », procéder à un « contre-stéréotypage ». Sous-entendu : les filles et les garçons sont exactement les mêmes, la physiologie sexuelle (la nature) ne compte pas, seul importe le choix sexuel. Toujours cet idéalisme consubstantiel à l’égalitarisme de gauche. On passe rapidement dans la case ”crétinisme” quand on entre dans le contenu des programmes destinés aux enfants. 

Par exemple, pour démontrer que les différences d’habillement entre les sexes n’ont aucune signification, un manuel montre le portrait officiel de Louis XIV  en soulignant qu’il portait des talons hauts. Donc, n’est-ce pas ? il se costumait en femme. Le Roi-Soleil était un travesti, c’est bien connu.  On stigmatise le fait « d’acheter un poupon à sa petite fille et non un camion » et cet horrible préjugé de ne pas offrir de poupées aux petits garçons, et tout à l’avenant. De même le rapport préconise de ne plus parler d’ « école maternelle » mais d’ « école pré-élémentaire » car le terme ”maternel” fait référence aux soins apportés aux petits enfants par les mères, alors que, bien entendu, les papas peuvent parfaitement  prodiguer leurs soins aux nourrissons. (2) Les allaiter, aussi ? 

On remarquera de ce fait, dans cette théorie du genre, qui vise la déconstruction de la famille, la haine de la maternité, supposée oppressive pour les femmes. Il faut corréler cela aux positions pro-abortives extrémistes et à l’homophilie défendues par l’idéologie au pouvoir. L’objectif implicite (nihiliste et suicidaire) est la destruction à terme du modèle du couple et de la famille de souche en France, en installant la confusion des rôles sexuels, le brouillage de la féminité/maternité, et l’apologie de la stérilité.  Cette idéologie dissimule par ailleurs un profond esprit égotique et irresponsable.

Mais on ne peut que constater avec effroi que le moyen utilisé par le pouvoir socialiste est le formatage des mentalités dès la petite enfance. Dans l’irrespect absolu de l’innocence de l’enfant. C’est bien là la logique soft-totalitaire de M. Vincent Peillon qui considère l’Éducation nationale non pas comme une institution d’instruction (telle que la voulait Jules Ferry et la vraie République) mais de propagande et de rabotage de la liberté de penser.  Peu importe pour ces bourgeois trotskystes et idéologues fanatiques que le peuple devienne inculte pourvu qu’il pense bien.

Tout cela étant dit, ce qui est réjouissant et rassurant, c’est que cette politique ”éducative” inspirée de la théorie du genre (gender theory, d’origine gauchiste américaine des années 60 et 70, vieille lune) échouera lamentablement, comme échoue toute utopie de gauche.

 L’essence de la gauche, c’est la révolte contre la nature humaine en particulier et le refus de l’ordre naturel en général. Les sexes n’existent pas et la nature est un ”stéréotype”, n’est-ce pas ? Les enfants, qu’on veut abrutir par l’enseignement de la théorie du genre, ne marcheront pas dans la combine. Leur nature est plus forte (et plus intelligente) que les radotages des fonctionnaires payés pour les décérébrer en leur racontant des inepties. 

Notes: 

(1) L’idéologie féministe officielle (cf. à ce propos mon essai Sexe et Dévoiement, Éditions du Lore) a celle paradoxale particularité qu’elle est anti-féminine. Elle ne vise pas à défendre les femmes mais à les masculiniser, à les dépouiller de leur féminité. D’autre part, l’insistance sur la ”parité” est un miroir aux alouettes qui cache un silence tonitruant sur l’oppression envers les femmes pratiqué par l’islam, intouchable.

(2) Le ”politiquement correct” s’attache d’abord au langage. Vouloir truquer les mots en espérant changer les choses. C’est un procédé qui s’inspire des méthodes des régimes totalitaires du XXe siècle.

Psychopathology of the Left

Psychopathology of the Left:
Some Preliminary Notes

by Kerry Bolton

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Editor’s Note:

The following essay was later incorporated into Kerry Bolton’s The Psychotic Left: From Jacobin France to the Occupy Movement ^[2], available from Black House Publishing ^[3].

The ‘Right’ of the political dichotomy, including even social and moral values that have traditionally been regarded – until recently – as normative, has for approximately eighty years, been the subject of analysis not just politically and sociologically, but psychologically.

The impetus for a psychological analysis of the Right and even of conservative morality, as a mental aberration, was led by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory which, with the rise of Hitler, was transferred en masse to the USA under the auspices of Columbia University, where it was re-established in New York as the Institute of Social Research.[1] The seminal document issued by this coterie, headed by Theodore Adorno, was The Authoritarian Personality,[2] a psychological study which intended to show through statistical analysis with a survey based on an ‘F’ (Fascism) Scale, that traditional values on morality, and especially the family and parental authority, were in need of psychological reorientation and were symptoms of latent ‘fascism’. In particular, the patriarchal family came under attack as the root institution for the cultivation of a ‘fascist’ mentality.[3]

While Leftist social scientists such as those of the Frankfurt School sought to show through statistical analysis that conservative values are psychologically abnormal, concurrently there was a move to show that Leftists have normative values. Rothman and Lichter in their psycho-historical study of Jews in the US New Left, state that studies by social scientists have been devised to show that Leftists possess positive, normative values. They write that in the USA and to a lesser extent Europe most ‘commentaries and “scientific” studies of the student movement agreed that the radical young represented the best in their societies’. Rothman and Lichter point out that the studies involved very small numbers and that the examiners’ sympathies were with their subjects politically. This coterie of social scientists produced a stream of studies ‘that seemed to prove, that radical students were democratic, humanitarian, psychologically healthy and morally advanced’. ‘All these critical studies are either impressionistic or based on small samples’.[4]

Many social scientists attributed many ‘positive’ personality attributes or political views to the New Left largely because their questionnaires were either constructed in such a manner as to ascribe such attributes to radical students almost by definition, or because the students… knew how to respond ‘appropriately’ to the questions posed.[5]

Hence the perception has persisted that that ‘Right’ is based on values emanating from the mentally dysfunctional, often based in the patriarchal family; and the ‘Left’ is mentally healthy. Rothman and Lichter are critical of the Frankfurt School, and the use of the so-called “‘F’ scale to uncover ‘Fascist’ tendencies as personality types. Rothman and Lichter argue that The Authoritarian Personality was a study intended to confirm the preconceived opinions of the authors.[6]

However, Rothman and Lichter’s studies of New Left students found that ‘radicals were significantly more likely than moderates to manifest tendencies toward a negative identity, masochistic surrender and treating people as concepts’. Jewish radicals typically manifested a tendency to escape from a dominating mother, while non-Jewish radicals regarded their fathers as more dominant but flawed.[7]

Although the synthesis of Freudianism and Marxism was unacceptable to the Stalinists, and the Critical Theorists were rejected by the German Communist Party,[8] the USSR found psychiatry a useful means of silencing ‘dissidents’ by subjecting them to psychiatric examination and routinely diagnosing them as schizophrenic, whereafter they would be confined to a mental asylum and concomitantly anti-Sovietism identified as a form of psychosis.[9]

The celebrated poet Ezra Pound received similar treatment on his forcible return from Italy to the USA after World War II, having first been confined to an open air cage by the American occupation forces in Italy. To avoid the publicity of a treason trial for one of the world’s most eminent literati, Pound was confined to St Elizabeths mental asylum.[10]

Use of Psychiatry against Dissidents in the Liberal West

The Right has continued to be portrayed as a mental aberration, whether in its most extreme Hitlerite forms, or merely as enduring conservative values on the family, such values being portrayed as regressive. For example, the seminal post-War ‘fascist’ philosopher Francis Parker Yockey, upon his arrest for passport violations in San Francisco in 1960, was ordered to undergo a mental examination by the Court[11] ensuring that anyone who tended towards such ideas could likewise be relegated as insane. Indeed, he committed suicide in prison during trial for the very reason that he feared being subjected to lobotomy or medication that would reduce him to a mentally vegetative state.[12] While the Leftist or liberal critic would typically respond that this in itself indicates Yockey’s mental state, the situation is not that simplistic, especially at that time.

Indeed, Dr Thomas Szasz, professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Syracuse New York Upstate Medical University, and an eminent critique of Freudianism, has written that ‘we are replacing social controls justified by race with social controls justified by psychiatric diagnosis’. Szasz cites the case of General Edwin Walker, a primary victim of the Kennedy era witch-hunt against ‘Right-wingers’ in the military. Walker was forced to resign due to his anti-Communist education programme among the American military forces in Germany. Apparently the Liberal-American conflict with the USSR was not supposed to extend to an examination of Communist ideology, which might come uncomfortably close to ‘Right-wing extremism’. Gen. Walker, after his forced resignation, became a prominent fighter against desegregation, communism and liberalism. Walker assisted Governor Ross Barnett in leading mass resistance against the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, enforced by the invasion of Mississippi by Federal Troops in 1962. Szasz writes:

Arrested on four federal charges, including ‘inciting, assisting, and engaging in an insurrection against the authority of the United States,’ Walker was taken before a U.S. commissioner and held pending the posting of $100,000 bond. While he was making arrangements to post bail, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered Walker flown, on a government aircraft, to Springfield, Missouri, to be incarcerated in the U.S. Medical Center for Prisoners for ‘psychiatric observation’ on suspicion that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.[13]

Walker’s entry in Wikipedia mentions neither this nor the ensuing confrontation between Walker’s legal team and the government’s psychiatric team. The reader is told only that Walker ‘posted bond and returned home to Dallas, where he was greeted by a crowd of 200 supporters. After a federal grand jury adjourned in January 1963 without indicting him, the charges were dropped’.[14]

Szasz is able to write on the Walker case from first-hand experience, as he was asked to advise Walker’s legal team. Of particular interest here is that Szasz writes:

I summarized the evidence for my view that psychiatry is a threat to civil liberties, especially to the liberties of individuals stigmatized as ‘right-wingers’, illustrated by the famous case of Ezra Pound, who was locked up for 13 years while the government ostensibly waited for his ‘doctors’ to restore his competence to stand trial. Now the Kennedys and their psychiatrists were in the process of doing the same thing to Walker.[15]

Had Yockey therefore been so ‘paranoid’ two years previously when he was worried that he would be diagnosed insane, locked away in a facility and subjected to cerebral destruction through the then widely used methods of lobotomy or electric shock?

Szasz told the legal team that it would be no use trying to argue for Walker’s released on the basis of truth. However, the defence expert witness, Dr. Robert L. Stubblefield, chief psychiatrist at the Southwest Medical Center in Dallas, was able to expose Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, long-time chief medical officer at Baltimore City’s Supreme Court, as ‘an evil quack’, as Szasz states it, Walker was declared mentally fit, and a Federal Grand Jury refused to indict him.

Szasz states that even Senator Barry Goldwater two years later, as Republican Presidential candidate, was a target of politicised psychiatry:

Less than two years later, my view that organized American psychiatry was becoming overtly political, seeking the existential invalidation and psychiatric destruction of individuals who do not share the psychiatric establishment’s left-liberal ‘progressive’ views, received further dramatic support. In 1964, when Senator Barry Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president, 1,189 psychiatrists publicly declared–without benefit of examination–that Goldwater was ‘psychologically unfit to be President of the United States’. Many offered a diagnosis of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ as the basis for their judgment.[16]

The use of psychiatry to marginalize political opponents of Left-liberal dogma is obviously not a mere paranoid delusion of the Right. Hence, for example, The Nizkor Project, which specialises in smearing Rightists and ‘Holocaust deniers’, uses a psychiatric term in describing the US ‘militia movement’ as ‘paranoid’’.[17]

Yet the Left, despite its manifestation of the most extreme forms of sadism since the French Revolution of 1789-92, has largely escaped critical psychological analyses of its leaders and ideologues. The Left is now doctrinally acceptable as normative, and the adherents of its most extreme variation – communism – can maintain respectable positions in academia, and have their books published by the large publishers, while those of the Right are marginalized.

Rather, Karl Marx for example, continues to be feted among respectable quarters as a seminal and still valuable contributor to sociology. While Jim Jones is generally perceived as deranged, he is considered within the context of any other cult leader such as David Koresh, rather than as an apostle of the Left whose actions were consistent with the Left doctrinally and historically, and whose psychological profile is analogous to that of other Leftists still regarded as paragons of democratic and liberal values.

The Left and the Degenerative Personality

The Hungarian physician and sociologist Dr Max Nordau wrote on the degeneration of culture and philosophy as a symptom of mental and moral degeneration. Writing in 1895, Nordau provided a proto-psychohistorical perspective on Leftist revolutions, which was developed several decades later by the American, Dr Lothrop Stoddard, who described such upheavals as the ‘revolt against civilisation’.[18] This theory postulates that civilisational values are an unendurable burden upon the mentally subnormal, including types that are both what might popularly be called the ‘unbalanced genius’ and the common criminal. Hence, the ‘revolt against civilisation’ is rationalised as a political doctrine for the overthrow of social order, and the unleashing of pent-up depravity. The revolutionary Left is rationalised sociopathology.

Dr Nordau described several types of social marginality, which often includes the highly intelligent:

Quite a number of different designations have been found for these persons. Maudsley and Ball call them ‘Borderland dwellers’ – that is to say, dwellers on the borderland between reason and pronounced madness. Magnan gives to them the name of ‘higher degenerates’ and Lombroso[19] speaks of mattoids (from matto, the Italian for insane).[20]

These ‘mattoids’ or ‘borderland dwellers’ provide the leadership of social upheavals, while the types that might typically be found in the criminal underworld provide the mobs. Nordau states:

In the mental development of degenerates, we meet with the same irregularity that we have observed in their physical growth. The asymmetry of face and cranium finds, as it were, its counterpart in their mental faculties. Some of the latter are completely stunted, others morbidly exaggerated. That which nearly all degenerates lack is the sense of morality and of right and wrong. For them there exists no law, no decency, no modesty. In order to satisfy any momentary impulse, or inclination, or caprice, they commit crimes and trespasses with the greatest calmness and self-complacency, and do not comprehend that other persons take offence. When this phenomenon is present in a high degree, we speak of ‘moral insanity’ with Maudsley; there are, nevertheless, lower stages in which the degenerate does not, perhaps, himself commit any act which will bring him into conflict with the criminal code, but at least asserts the theoretical legitimacy of crime; seeks, with philosophically sounding fustian, to prove that ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ virtue and vice, are arbitrary distinctions; goes into raptures over evildoers and their deeds; professes to discover beauties in the lowest and most repulsive things; and tries to awaken interest in, and so-called ‘comprehension’ of, every bestiality. The two psychological roots of moral insanity, in all its degrees of development, are, firstly, unbounded egoism, and, secondly, impulsiveness: – i.e., inability to resist a sudden impulse to any deed; and these characteristics also constitute the chief intellectual stigmata of degenerates.[21]

Nordau considers how the ‘mattoid’ uses revolution as an outlet for destructive urges:

In view of Lombroso’s researches [Lombroso, La Physionomie des Anarchistes, 1891, p. 227] it can scarcely be doubted that the writings and acts of revolutionists and anarchists are also attributable to degeneracy. The degenerate is incapable of adapting himself to existing circumstances. This incapacity, indeed, is an indication of morbid variation in every species, and probably a primary cause of their sudden extinction. He therefore rebels against conditions and views of things which he necessarily feels to be painful, chiefly because they impose upon him the duty of self-control, of which he is incapable on account of his organic weakness of will. Thus he becomes an improver of the world, and devises plans for making mankind happy, which, without exception, are conspicuous just as much by their fervent philanthropy, and often pathetic sincerity, as by their absurdity and monstrous ignorance of all real relations.[22]

It is the ‘mattoids’ who provide the philosophical justification for violence done against civilized values in the name of ‘freedom’, and who continue to be upheld by today’s intelligentsia, itself often of mattoid type, as ‘great thinkers’. Nordau writes of them:

“The degenerate,’’ says Legrain, [Paul Maurice Legrain, Du délire chez les dégénérés; Paris, 1886, p. 11] may be a genius. A badly balanced mind is susceptible of the highest conceptions, while, on the other hand, one meets in the same mind with traits of meanness and pettiness all the more striking from the fact that they co-exist with the most brilliant qualities. ‘As regards their intellect, they can (says Jacques Roubinovitch, Hystérie male et dégénérescence; Paris,1890, p.33) ‘attain to a high degree of development, but from a moral point of view their existence is completely deranged … A degenerate will employ his brilliant faculties quite as well in the service of some grand object as in the satisfaction of the basest propensities (Lombroso has cited a large number of undoubted geniuses who were equally undoubted mattoids, graphomaniacs, or pronounced lunatics.)[23]

It is perhaps more than anything else that the forces of the Left, in both Socialist and Liberal-democratic forms, masquerade as the wave of the future, while any individual, doctrine or institution opposing or blocking them is disparaged as regressive. Yet, as Nordau pointed out over a century ago, these ‘moderns’, these ‘progressives’, who disparage all tradition and want to make the world anew, are the heralds of atavism, whether in the arts, ethics or politics. Nordau continues:

Retrogression, relapse – this is in general the ideal of this band who dare to speak of liberty and progress. They wish to be the future. That is one of their chief pretensions. That is one of the means by which they catch the largest number of simpletons. We have, however, seen in all individual cases that it is not the future but the most forgotten, far-away past Degenerates lisp and stammer, instead of speaking. They utter monosyllabic cries, instead of constructing grammatically and syntactically articulated sentences. They draw and paint like children, who dirty tables and walls with mischievous hands. They compose music like that of the yellow natives of East Asia. They confound all the arts, and lead them back to the primitive forms they had before evolution differentiated them. Every one of their qualities is atavistic, and we know, moreover, that atavism is one of the most constant marks of degeneracy.[24]

Nordau wrote of these ‘modernist’ trends in art, philosophy and politics as going against the normative values that decades later started to be described by Adorno and his team from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as incipient ‘fascism’:

The ‘freedom’ and ‘modernity’, the ‘progress’ and ‘truth’, of these fellows are not ours. We have nothing in common with them. They wish for self-indulgence; we wish for work. They wish to drown consciousness in the unconscious; we wish to strengthen and enrich consciousness. They wish for evasive ideation and babble; we wish for attention, observation, and knowledge. The criterion by which true modems may be recognised and distinguished from impostors calling themselves moderns may be this: Whoever preaches absence of discipline is an enemy of progress; and whoever worships his ‘I’ is an enemy to society. Society has for its first premise, neighbourly love and capacity for self-sacrifice; and progress is the effect of an ever more rigorous subjugation of the beast in man, of an ever tenser self-restraint, an ever keener sense of duty and responsibility. The emancipation for which we are striving is of the judgement, not of the appetites.[25]

If one notes what Nordau was describing as normative civilisational values in 1895, he would certainly have been diagnosed as mentally imbalanced and an incipient ‘fascist’, possibly even an ‘anti-Semitism’ – if we disregard his Jewish background and role in later life in the Zionist movement – by Adorno and the other authors of The Authoritarian Personality.

Jacobinism and Bolshevism: The Revolt of the Under-Man

Lothrop Stoddard, whose works became very widely read in the early 20th century, writing in the aftermath of the Bolshevik upheaval that had reduced Russia to a hell, took up the theme of mental and physical degeneration as causes of revolt against civilisational values by what he termed the ‘under-man’. Giving an account of the personality types of the Bolsheviks and their methods of sadism, Stoddard wrote:

It would be extremely instructive if the Bolshevik leaders could be psycho-analyzed. Certainly, many of their acts suggest peculiar mental states. The atrocities perpetrated by some of the Bolshevik Commissars, for example, are so revolting that they seem explicable only by mental aberrations like homicidal mania or the sexual perversion known as sadism.

One such scientific examination of a group of Bolshevik leaders has been made. At the time of the Red terror in the city of Kiev, in the summer of 1919, the medical professors of Kiev University were spared on account of their usefulness to their terrorist masters. Three of these men were competent alienists, who were able to diagnose the Bolshevik leaders mentally in the course of their professional duties. Now their diagnosis was that nearly all the Bolshevik leaders were degenerates, of more or less unsound mind. Furthermore, most of them were alcoholics, a majority were syphilitic, while many were drug fiends…[26]

Stoddard gives a dramatic illustration of the roles being played out in such revolts, when an internationally acclaimed philology scholar, Professor Timofie Florinsky of Kiev University, was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and spontaneously shot by one of the ‘judges’ for giving an ‘irritating reply’ to a question. The murderous Commissar, Rosa Schwartz, a former prostitute, was drunk.[27]

The Kiev event is pregnant with historical and cultural meaning. The clash of two worlds, fundamentally alien to each other but coinciding in time and space: the commissar, a drunken ex-whore, puts to death in an instant of primal savagery the scholar. Such scenes had been played out en masse by the mobs during the French Revolution, continuously plied with alcohol and drugs, pushed onward by prostitutes, pirates and criminals, and agitated by mattoids from among depraved elements of the upper and middle classes.

While it now seems to be regarded as passé to refer to what was once widely called the Red Terror in Bolshevik Russia, attention being drawn almost entirely to the ‘crimes of the Nazis’, any reference to major atrocities other than that involving Jews being regarded as ‘relativising the Holocaust’,[28] the implementation of the Bolshevik policy on terror shows symptoms of mass sadism in a literal, psychotic sense. One must go to the accounts of the time, however, in order to realise the character of the sadism.

After Denikin’s White Army defeated the Bolsheviks at Odessa in August 1919, Rev. R Courtier-Forster, Chaplain of the British forces at Odessa and the Black Sea ports, who had been held captive by the Bolsheviks, reported the horrors of Bolshevism, relating how on the ship “Sinope”, the largest cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet, some of his personal friends had been chained to planks and slowly pushed into the ship’s furnaces to be roasted alive. Others were scalded with steam from the ship’s boilers. Mass rapes were committed, while the local Soviet press debated the possibilities of nationalizing women. The screams from women being raped, and from other victims in what Rev. Courtier-Forster called the ‘Bolshevik’s House of Torture’ at Catherine Square, could be heard for blocks around, while at Catherine Square the Bolsheviks tried to muffle the screams with the noise of lorries thundering up and down the street.[29]

When the Rohrberg Commission of Enquiry entered Kiev, after the Soviets had been driven out in August 1919, it described the ‘execution hall’ of the Bolsehvik secret police, the Cheka, as follows:

All the cement floor of the great garage (the execution hall of the departmental Cheka of Kiev) was flooded with blood. This blood was no longer flowing, it formed a layer of several inches: it was a horrible mixture of blood, brains, of pieces of skull, of tufts of hair and other human remains. All the walls were bespattered with blood; pieces of brains and scalps were sticking to them. A gutter twenty-five centimetres wide by twenty-five centimetres deep and about ten metres long ran from the centre of the garage towards a subterranean drain. This gutter along its whole length was full to the top with blood…Usually as soon as the massacre had taken place the bodies were conveyed out of the town in motor lorries and buried beside the grave about which we have spoken; we found in a corner of the garden another grave which was older and contained about eighty bodies. Here we discovered on the bodies traces of cruelties and mutilations the most varied and unimaginable. Some bodies were disembowelled, others had limbs chopped off, some were literally hacked to pieces. Some had their eyes put out and the head, face, neck and trunk covered with deep wounds. Further on we found a corpse with a wedge driven into the chest. Some had no tongues. In a corner of the grave we discovered a certain quantity of arms and legs….[30]

Such atavistic savagery goes even beyond mass murder. It is the psychosis of a Jeffrey Dahmer,[31] or Edward Gein,[32] rationalised as a political ideology with noble ideals, that continues to have adherents with respectable positions in academia.

The precursor of the Bolshevik Revolution, that of France during the period 1789-1792 unleashed a mass psychosis of revolt of the dregs of France, led by the mattoid elements. As in today’s Western liberal-democracies, the theory is that manifestations of inequality and differences can be eliminated by changing the social structure according to dogma. The doctrine of the French Revolution was a ‘return to Nature’, an idolised and imaginative interpretation of what Nature was supposed to be like, concocted in the drawing rooms of the European intelligentsia, by writers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Weishaupt, the founder of the proto-communist Illuminati. According to these ideologues, the cause of tyranny, injustice, violence and inequality, was civilisation. If civilisation itself could be overthrown and humanity returned to a supposed innocent state of nature, then all could live in an idyllic state of happiness, peace and brotherhood. This requires the abolition of civilisational institutions such as marriage, private property, Church, state, monarchy. Karl Marx formalized precisely the same doctrine about half a century later. This atavism is ironically heralded as ‘progressive’.

The French sociologist Gustave Le Bon noted in 1895:

The idea that institutions can remedy the defects of societies, that national progress is the consequence of the improvement of institutions and governments, and that social changes can be effected by decrees – this idea, I say, is still generally accepted. It was the starting point of the French Revolution, and the social theories of the present day are based upon it.[33]

Le Bon later wrote, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, of the same atavism that had afflicted France now unfolding in Russia:

The Bolshevik mentality is as old as history. Cain, in the Old Testament, had the mind of a Bolshevik. But it is only in our days that this ancient mentality has met with a political doctrine to justify it. This is the reason of its rapid propagation, which has been undermining the old social scaffolding.[34]

The reader is referred to Nesta H Webster’s history, The French Revolution,[xxxv] which draws on contemporary documents from both Jacobins and Royalists, which dramatically brings to life the depravity and cowardice of the dregs of France, led by disaffected mattoid lawyers and Orleanist aristocrats, and of the heroism of those loyal to the King, including those among the common folk. What is notable in this context is the manner by which the mob could be agitated with the continuous supply of alcohol and narcotics that seemed to maintain a blood frenzy, paid for by the wealth of the Duc d’Orléans, a craven megalomaniac who desired to usurp the Throne on the backs of the criminal underworld that he had unleashed.

Here in the French Revolution is a dress rehearsal for the blood-letting by the Bolsheviks, 130 years later. At the Convent des Carmes, Rue de Vaugirard, up to 200 priests had been incarcerated. Here a drunken mob converged and with pistols and sabres killed the defenceless priests.[26] The Archbishop of Arles had his face cleaved almost in two, as he offered his life in the hope of appeasing the bloodlust and sparing the other priests. The old man’s death only excited the mob further, and they fired upon the priests kneeling in prayer in the chapel.[37] Other such massacres were conducted on priests imprisoned at the Abbaye in Paris. However, there were more victims among ‘the people’ than among the aristocrats and clergy. The revolutionary leaders sought to ‘amputate’ France, and to radically reduce its population, reminiscent of Pol Pot.

In La Vendée region a policy of wholesale extermination was undertaken to eliminate a folk who remained steadfast to King and Church.

Webster notes a curious transformation of France during the era, which shows that the Revolution was a victory of the ‘under-man’ and a return to the atavistic on the ruins of civilisation. She writes that mediocre lawyers such as Robespierre, who now held the power, vented their frustration at years of personal failure by trying to eliminate the talented and intelligent. All those who had devoted themselves to scholarship were targeted. ‘The war on education was even carried out against the treasures of science, art and literature’. One revolutionary luminary proposed killing the collection of rare animals at the Museum of Natural History. A widespread notion of the revolutionaries was to burn all the libraries and retain only books pertaining to the Revolution and to law. Thousands of books and valuable paintings were disposed of or destroyed. ‘Not only education but politeness in all forms was to be destroyed’. It became necessary to assume a ‘rough and boorish manner’ and to present ‘an uncultivated appearance’. ‘A refined countenance, hands that bore no marks of manual labour, well-brushed hair, clean and decent garments, were regarded with suspicion – to make sure of keeping one’s head it was advisable that it should be unkempt’. It was advisable to ruffle one’s hair, grow the thickness of whiskers, soil the hands…’ ‘In a word, it was not only a war on nobility, on wealth, on industry, on art, on intellect; it was a war on civilisation’.[38]

It might be observed today that the cult of the dirty and the unkempt has become a normative aspect of society.

Notes

1. K R Bolton, Revolution from Above (London: Arktos Media Ltd., 2011), p. 101.

2. T W Adorno, et al The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950).

3. K R Bolton, ‘”Sex Pol” Ideology: The Influence of the Freudian-Marxian Synthesis on Politics and Society’, Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Washington, Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall 2010, pp 329-38.

4. S Rothman and S R Lichter, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 50-52.

5. Ibid., p. 55.

6. Ibid., p. 60.

7. Ibid., p. 286.

8. Myran Sharaf, Fury on Earth – A Biography of Wilhelm Reich (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983), p. 169; K R Bolton, ‘Sex Pol Ideology’, op. cit., pp. 347-348.

9. Ibid., p. 339.

10. E Fuller Torrey, The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secrets of St Elizabeth’s (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984).

11. ‘Jailbreak plot’ told in passport case’, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 January 1960, p. 5.

12. Michael O’Meara, ‘Introduction’, Francis Parker Yockey (1949), The Proclamation of London of the European Liberation Front (Shamley Green, England: Wermod & Wermod Publishing Group, 2012), xvi. http://shop.wermodandwermod.com/the-proclamation-of-london-of-the-european-liberation-front.html

13. Yockey was to be subjected to precisely the same procedure.

14. Thomas Szasz, ‘The Shame of Medicine: The Case of General Edwin Walker’, The Freeman, Vol. 59, no. 8, October 2009, http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-therapeutic-state/the-shame-of-medicine-the-case-of-general-edwin-walker/

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17.‘Paranoia as Patriotism: Far Right Influences on the Militia movement’, The Nizkor Project, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/paranoia-as-patriotism/minutemen.html

18. Lothrop Stoddard (1922), The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man (Wermod & Wermod, 2012).

19. Cesare Lombroso is widely regarded as the founder of criminology.

20. Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York: D Appleton & Co., 1895), p. 18.

21. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

22. Ibid., p. 22.

23. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

24. Ibid., p. 555.

25. Ibid., p. 560.

26. Lothrop Stoddard, op. cit., Chapter VI: ‘Rebellion of the Under-Man’, p. 177,

27. Ibid., p. 177 n.

28. Deborah E Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (London: Penguin Books, 1994). See especially Chapter 11: ‘Watching on the Rhine: The Future Course of Holocaust Denial’, pp. 209-222.

29. R. Courtier-Forster, ‘Bolshevism, Reign of Torture at Odessa’, London Times, 3 December, 1919, pp. 2, 3, 4.

30. S Melgunoff, La terreur rouge (Paris, 1927), cited by Vicomte Leon de Poncins, The Secret Powers Behind Revolution (California: Christian Book Club of America, n.d.), p. 149.

31. Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 young men during 1978-1991, refrigerated and cannibalised their body parts.

32. Edward Gein was a cannibal, necrophile, and grave robber, who used bodies parts to construct leggings, furniture covering and so forth.

33. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd, op.cit., p. 86.

34. Gustave Le Bon, The World in Revolt (New York, 1921) p. 179; cited by Stoddard, op. cit., Chapter VII: ‘The War Against Chaos’.

35. Nesta H Webster, The French Revolution, 1919, 1969. Wermod & Wermod, Britain, will be issuing a de luxe edition of The French Revolution in 1912, with an introduction by this author. The pages cited in this article are from the 1969 edition.

36. Ibid., p. 311.

37. Ibid., p. 312.

38. Ibid., pp. 412-413.

Source: Ab Aeterno, no. 10, January-March 2010.

 

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D. H. Lawrence on the Meaning of Sex

D. H. Lawrence on the Meaning of Sex

By Derek Hawthorne 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

D. H. Lawrence is best known to the general public as a writer of sexy books. In his own time, his treatment of sex made him notorious and caused him to run afoul of the authorities on a number of occasions. I have no desire to rehearse in detail the well-known history of Lawrence’s troubles with censorship, but for those who do not know anything of it a few details will suffice.

In September 1915 Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow, one of his major works, was published by Methuen. By November it had been banned by court order, largely due to Lawrence’s brief (and, by today’s standards, extremely tame) depiction of a lesbian affair. The following year Lawrence finished what is arguably his greatest novel, Women in Love. However, owing to the notoriety of The Rainbow as well as to Women in Love’s much more frank depiction of sexuality, he could not find a publisher for the novel until 1920. Disgusted by his treatment at the hands of his fellow countrymen, Lawrence moved himself and his wife Frieda to Sicily that year, thereby beginning a long sojourn abroad that would take them to Sardinia, Ceylon, Australia, California, and New Mexico.

Lawrence was deterred neither by censorship nor by the frequent vilification he suffered at the hands of the press. In 1926, on a visit to Italy he wrote the first of three versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, his most sexually explicit work and, in fact, one of the most sexually explicit “serious” works of literature ever written. A small edition of the novel was brought out in Florence in 1928, and another in Paris. Various pirated editions were also printed.

Copies of the novel were seized by customs in both the United States and Great Britain, and the reviews that appeared were brutal. One English critic declared that the novel was “the most evil outpouring that has ever besmirched the literature of our country. The sewers of French pornography would be dragged in vain to find a parallel in beastliness . . . Unfortunately for literature as for himself, Mr. Lawrence has a diseased mind.”[1] (The famous court case in Britain occurred thirty years after Lawrence’s death, when Penguin Books brought out an unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley.)

In 1926 Lawrence had started to paint. He wrote to his friend Earl Brewster, a Buddhist, “I put a phallus, a lingam you call it, in each one of my pictures somewhere. And I paint no picture that won’t shock people’s castrated social spirituality.”[2] Predictably, when an exhibition of his paintings was held in London in 1929 it was raided by the police, though, as Jeffrey Meyers notes, the officers “politely waited to carry out their orders until the Aga Khan had finished viewing the pictures.”[3]

Why was Lawrence seemingly so preoccupied with sex? The answer is that he saw sex as a means to awaken the true self, and to discover not only our own inner being but the inner being of all things. In Fantasia of the Unconscious he writes, “To the individual, the act of coition is a great psychic experience, a vital experience of tremendous importance.”[4]

Lawrence was unquestionably influenced by Schopenhauer in his views about the metaphysical significance of sex. In his unpublished notebooks—summing up views he expressed more circumspectly in his published writings—Schopenhauer states

If I am asked where the most intimate knowledge of that inner essence of the world, of that thing in itself which I have called the will to live, is to be found, or where that essence enters most clearly into our consciousness, or where it achieves the purest revelation of itself, then I must point to ecstasy in the act of copulation. That is it! That is the true essence and core of all things, the aim and purpose of all existence.[5]

However, Lawrence (unlike Schopenhauer) saw the inner essence of things as having religious significance. He felt that the “life mystery” at the core of all was the only thing that he could honestly call God. Hence, he regarded sex as sacred—indeed as an act of divine worship—since it opens us to the life mystery. In a posthumously published essay Lawrence writes, “In the very darkest continent of the body there is God.”[6] This is the real key to understanding Lawrence’s treatment of sex: it is reverential; he regards sex as sacred, not as profane. The public attacks on Lawrence’s work as “smut” are hugely unjust, for Lawrence had a lifelong hatred of pornography precisely because he saw it as a profanation of sex.

An illustration of Lawrence’s attitude is his reaction to James Joyce’s Ulysses. As Jeffrey Meyers notes, it was, in part, Lawrence’s hostile reaction to Ulysses that spurred him to write Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In a letter Lawrence stated, “The last part of [Ulysses] is the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written. . . . This Ulysses muck is more disgusting than Casanova. I must show that it can be done without muck.”[7] This may seem a trifle ironic, given how others had attacked Lawrence’s own work with similar invective. But, in fact, Lawrence’s attitude to Joyce is not hypocritical. He is not attacking the explicitness of Joyce’s treatment of sex, but rather what he regarded as its unforgivable irreverence.

In Fantasia of the Unconscious Lawrence writes, “In sex we have our basic, most elemental being.”[8] Further, he declares that the procreative purpose of sex is “just a side-show.”[9] Lawrence rejects the reductive, scientific understanding of sex; part and parcel of the scientific will to nullify beauty and mystery and to make everything mundane and “practical.”

Sex can lead to reproduction, but it is no more correct to say that the “purpose” of sex is reproduction than it is to say that the purpose of eating is to fill our stomachs. More often than not, we eat not because we happen to really need nourishment just then, but because we take pleasure in eating, in the taste of food, and in the company of those we eat with. And frequently the food we enjoy ingesting has little actual nutritional value. If the purpose of eating were simply to acquire nourishment, then we ought not mind the idea of simply ingesting a tasteless paste full of vitamins, minerals, protein, and carbohydrates three times daily.

Sex, Lawrence tells us,

is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness. It is the basic consciousness of the blood, the nearest thing in us to pure material consciousness. It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep. The blood-consciousness is the first and last knowledge of the living soul: the depths.[10]

When we enter into what Schopenhauer calls “ecstasy in the act of copulation,” there is a sloughing off of intellect, of self-consciousness. The act is ecstatic precisely to the extent that this is accomplished. The Greek ekstasis could be translated literally as “standing outside oneself.” In ecstatic acts we have the sense of leaving ourselves, and certainly our consciousness of ourselves (our inner monitor, inner censor, inner doubter) behind. Insofar as we cannot accomplish this, the sexual act will be dissatisfying. The woman may experience little pleasure, and the man may even be unable to perform, should he fail to disengage the intellect.

Of course, when we are caught in the ecstasy of sex we are not literally unconscious. What happens, in effect, is that a different sort of consciousness takes over: what Lawrence calls “blood-consciousness.” What Lawrence means by this term is the pre-reflective, pre-conceptual, subterranean depth in consciousness: what he sometimes confusingly calls the “unconscious.”

Sometimes this type of consciousness is derisively labeled the “animal” in us. This is misleading, for we have a tendency not to think of ourselves as animals, and labeling the blood-consciousness “animal” becomes a way to disown it. But it is our own, and, of course, we are animals. In the heat of true, ecstatic sexual passion, one loses a sense of individuality. It is common to hear the participants speak (later on) of losing the sense of bodily boundaries, and feeling as if the two bodies merged into one. Strange, animal-like cries are uttered and motions become automatic rather than deliberately willed.

In sex we surrender our intellect and self-consciousness, and open ourselves to the blood-consciousness, to our primal self—so that we become, for the space of the act, that primal self. And this is the reason why modern people are so sex-obsessed.

To live in modern, industrialized society means to live almost constantly from what Lawrence calls the “upper centres,” from intellect. And it means to live surrounded at all times by the products of intellect, cocooned in a synthetic, human world built over top of the natural world, operating according to human ideas and ideals. Almost always, this life requires us to lead an existence that is false in certain fundamental ways; false and inimical to life and to the natural, primal self. Passionate sex, insofar as modern people can even manage it, is the only respite from this that most people know. As such, Lawrence believes that in sex we are fundamentally truer than at most other times in life. And reflection on what the sex act means may help us to recover this trueness in daily life, outside of sexual activity.

All of the above is an attempt to say “what sex is.” But Lawrence holds that ultimately it is ineffable:

We can never say, satisfactorily. But we know so much: we know that it is a dynamic polarity between human beings, and a circuit of force always flowing. . . . We know that in the act of coition the blood of the individual man, acutely surcharged with intense vital electricity—we know no word, so say “electricity,” by analogy—rises to a culmination, in a tremendous magnetic urge towards the blood of the female. The whole of the living blood in the two individuals forms a field of intense, polarized magnetic attraction. So, the two poles must be brought into contact. In the act of coition, the two seas of blood in the two individuals, rocking and surging towards contact, as near as possible, clash into a oneness.[11]

Lawrence’s remark about his use of the term “electricity” tells us that we should not take this description very literally. When he speaks of an “electricity” in the blood of a sexually aroused man or woman, he uses this term, for lack of a better one, to describe the peculiar sense of acute, tingling “aliveness” that one feels in sexual ecstasy. When he speaks of a “magnetic attraction” between the blood of man and woman, he means the uncanny, overpowering, and unchosen sense of attraction that one experiences for the other. It is a sense of attraction that at times makes men and women feel that they must come together or die.

We attempt to deflate the mystery of this attraction by chalking it up to “chemistry.” Indeed it may somehow be chemical, but to describe the physical conditions necessary for a profound experience to take place does not render it less profound, or less mysterious. It might seem a bit ironic, given Lawrence’s criticisms of science, that his own language has a kind of scientific veneer, with its talk of “electricity,” “magnetism,” and “polarity.” But Lawrence’s “science” is, in fact, a throwback to the vitalistic philosophy of nature of the Romantics.

Lawrence attempts to sum things up as follows: “Sex then is a polarization of the individual blood in man towards the individual blood in woman.”[12] At the root of this idea is a basic conviction of Lawrence’s, which cannot be overemphasized: that men and women are fundamentally and radically different—metaphysically different. (See my essay “D. H. Lawrence on Men and Women ^[2].”) In the same text he writes, “We are all wrong when we say there is no vital difference between the sexes.”

Lawrence wrote this in 1921 intending it to be provocative, but it is surely much more controversial in today’s world, where it has become a dogma in some circles to insist that sex differences (now called “gender differences”) are “socially constructed,” and that the only natural differences between the sexes are purely and simply anatomical. Lawrence continues: “There is every difference. Every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a woman, and must remain so. Women can never feel or know as men do. And in the reverse, men can never feel and know, dynamically, as women do.”[13]

Interestingly, I believe that Lawrence derives the idea of “cells” being male or female from Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character, a text he was definitely familiar with. Weininger writes: “every cell of the organism . . . has a sexual character.” And: “In a male every part, even the smallest, is male, however much it may resemble the corresponding part of a female, and in the latter, likewise, even the smallest part is exclusively female.”[14]

Setting Weininger aside, this is Lawence’s way of emphasizing that men and women are different all the way down, and that there are ways in which they can never understand each other, and never see as the other sees. Lawrence is concerned in particular (though this is not obvious) to guard against the claim that there are borderline cases of men and women who are (psychically) androgynous, straddling the divide between male and female:

A child is born sexed. A child is either male or female; in the whole of its psyche and physique is either male or female. Every single living cell is either male or female, and will remain either male or female as long as life lasts. And every single cell in every male child is male, and every cell in every female is female. The talk about a third sex, or about the indeterminate sex, is just to pervert the issue.[15]

The reference in the last sentence is to the ideas of figures like Magnus Hirschfeld and, indeed, Otto Weininger, both of whom argued that homosexuals were sexually “intermediate.” Part of the reason Lawrence is so vehement in this passage is that he had strong homosexual inclinations (as any honest reader of Women in Love, especially its deleted “Prologue,” will admit). Early in life he saw himself as an androgynous being, with a hefty share of femininity in his soul. However, he came to repudiate this idea and to regard it as having hindered his development as a man.

The Phallus

In coition, Lawrence writes, “the two seas of blood in the two individuals, rocking and surging towards contact, as near as possible, clash into a oneness.”[16] The means by which this connection occurs, where the blood of the man and the woman is brought together, is the phallus. One of Lawrence’s most important philosophical essays is “A Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover,’” which he wrote partly to answer criticisms of the novel, and partly to make explicit and expound upon the novel’s message. He writes at one point that “The phallus is a column of blood that fills the valley of blood of a woman. The great river of male blood touches to its depths the great river of female blood—yet neither breaks its bounds.” The two blood streams, the male and the female, “encircle the whole of life.”[17] They never literally mingle, but coition is essentially an act in which the blood of the male, enfolded within an extension of his flesh, enters the blood-engorged flesh of the woman—and the two blood streams come as close to mingling as they ever will.

The result is a crisis; an ecstatic moment in which—as in the Zen experience of satori—there is the sudden, non-verbal intuition that this here now is all there is, and there is a loss of the sense of individual separateness and isolation; a sense of becoming absorbed into a greater unity. Lawrence describes the orgasm as follows: “There is a lightning flash which passes through the blood of both individuals, there is a thunder of sensation which rolls in diminishing crashes down the nerves of each—and then the tension passes.”[18]

In his later works, Lawrence writes often and explicitly of the metaphysical, indeed the divine significance of the phallus. For example, in the second of Lawrence’s three versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (published posthumously as John Thomas and Lady Jane) there is a scene in which Constance Chatterley lies beside her sleeping lover, contemplating his flaccid penis. “Wasn’t there a weird, grotesque godhead in it?” she asks herself, and what follows is a passage of great significance:

To most men, the penis was merely a member, at the disposal of the personality. Most men merely used their penis as they use their fingers, for some personal purpose of their own. But in a true man, the penis has a life of its own, and is the second man within the man. It is prior to the personality. And the personality must yield before the priority and the mysterious root-knowledge of the penis, or the phallus. For this is the difference between the two: the penis is a mere member of the physiological body. But the phallus, in the old sense, has roots, the deepest roots of all, in the soul and the greater consciousness of man, and it is through the phallic roots that inspiration enters the soul.[19]

Lawrence makes a traditional distinction in this passage (though, as usual, he is slip-shod about it) between the penis and the phallus, which is the erect penis. In cultures that have worshipped the penis, it always the erect penis that is depicted and revered. Why? Because, in a real sense, the phallus does not belong to the individual man. It is—notoriously—not under the control of his personality, his mental self-conscious being. It has a will of its own. It is the “second man within the man,” meaning that it is a direct expression or, if you will, externalization of the deeper, truer, self; of the unconscious, or blood-consciousness.

This self is “prior to the personality,” and indeed it is fundamentally the same in all men. So it transcends the individual—indeed it is an expression of the life mystery which permeates all of nature. The penis, Lawrence tells us, is a “mere member of the physiological body,” but the phallus is something that rises from out of the chthonic depth of nature itself. The phallus is our connection to those depths. When Lawrence says that it is “through the phallic roots that inspiration enters the soul” he means that it is insofar as we are able to surrender our intellect and mental awareness that we are guided by the wisdom of the blood-consciousness.

If a man’s mental self dominates him and grips him, refusing to let go, preoccupying him with thoughts, then he cannot achieve an erection. His mind has “blocked” the primal, unconscious self. This is all that the mind can do to the primal self—it cannot command it. Hence there is no “willing” an erection. But if a man can momentarily surrender his mental self, then the blood-consciousness is awakened, and the phallus comes to life. The virile man is admired because he has a connection to the primal force. The impotent man is pathetic in our eyes, because he has lost that connection. He is literally without power.

Thus, for Lawrence, sexual arousal in the male and the sex act following upon it become emblematic of what must take place if there is to be a general return to the blood-consciousness, and thus an achievement of lasting happiness, lasting satisfaction in the whole of life. There must be a surrender of idealism, and of the tendency to live strictly from the “upper centres.” There is no way to get to the natural self by way of intellect and its ideas, just as there is no willing an erection. All that mind can do is to let go—to do nothing. Then the blood-consciousness takes over and the result is that there rises up from the root of us a new man, a new self. New only in the sense that it is unfamiliar to us, for in truth it is actually the oldest of old selves.

Erection and a full, ecstatic sexual experience symbolize for Lawrence the successful reawakening of the primal self that is needed if we are to again become natural creatures and achieve our “fullness of being.” But they are not merely symbolic. Lawrence also sees coition as the deepest, most profound, and profoundly mysterious way in which we come into contact with our chthonic depth, and the chthonic depth of the natural world itself. Hence, in “A Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’” he says the following

[The] phallus is the connecting link between the two rivers [of male and female blood], that establishes the two streams in a oneness, and gives out of their duality a single circuit, forever. And this, this oneness gradually accomplished throughout a life-time in twoness, is the highest achievement of time or eternity. From it all things human spring, children and beauty and well-made things; all the true creations of humanity. And all we know of the will of God is that He wishes this, this oneness, to take place, fulfilled over a lifetime, this oneness within the great dual blood-stream of humanity.[20]

Here Lawrence makes it quite clear, as he does in innumerable other places, that his reverence for the phallus is a religious one. Indeed, it would not be a distortion to call his own, personal religion a form of “phallic worship.” This is, of course, a provocative choice of words, but not an inaccurate one. There is, in fact, a remarkable similarity between Lawrence’s views and Hindu Shaivism, the oldest surviving phallic cult in the world.

The God Shiva is a personification of what Lawrence means by the life mystery or “pan power,” as well as what Schopenhauer meant by the will in nature.[21] Alain Daniélou, one of the foremost Western interpreters of Shaivism, writes

As Lord of Yoga, Shiva is named Yogendra, Yogeshvara, Mahâyogi, since it is he who taught the world the Yoga method through which man can know himself, realize himself and communicate with subtle beings, beasts, plants and gods. He also teaches the dance and the music which leads to ecstasy, the intoxication which takes man out of himself. . . . His festivals are those of Spring, of the Renewal of Life, and of creative Eroticism. . . . He is naked, libidinous, and preaches rapture, love, detachment, and friendship with nature. God of Sensual Pleasure and of Death, he is present in the forest and the funeral pyre. Shiva is at the same time benevolent (Shambhu) and terrible (Bhîma).[22]

Although these and many other qualities are attributed to Shiva, the sacred Shaivite texts indicate that the true Shiva is beyond all human categories: “Shiva (the supreme divinity) is without sign (without sex), without color, without taste, without odor, beyond the reach of words or touch, without qualities, immutable and immobile.”[23] This being can therefore only be known through some tangible sign that it gives of itself in the physical, perceptible universe, and that sign is the phallus.

The Sanskrit word for phallus, lingam, literally means “sign.” Daniélou writes, “The lingam, or phallus, the source of life, is the form by which the Absolute Being, from whom the world is issued, can be evoked. . . . In the microcosm, which is to say in man, the sexual organ, the source of life, is the form in which the nature of the formless manifests itself.”[24]

Daniélou quotes liberally from ancient texts in order to explain the Shaivite attitude toward the phallus and its relationship to Shiva. One such text states, “Shiva said ‘I am not distinct from the phallus. The phallus is identical with me, and therefore must be worshipped. My well-beloved! Wherever there is an upright male organ, I myself am present, even if there is no other representation of me.”[25] This passage indicates that the phallus is not, in fact, merely a symbol of Shiva, but is a physical “expression” of the god—the most perfect expression of the god, in fact. In a way, Shiva is distinct from the phallus, but in a way the phallus is Shiva.

We find just the same sort of mystical logic in Lawrence: the phallus is an expression of the life mystery, as the blood-consciousness that animates it is an expression of the life mystery; but the phallus, and blood-consciousness just are the life mystery, as it expresses itself in us. The phallus is our link to the life force itself. Daniélou writes, “The penis is therefore the organ through which a link is established between man . . . and the creative force which is the nature of the divine.”[26] Lawrence expresses precisely this Shaivite conception in John Thomas and Lady Jane, when Constance Chatterley has an argument with her very modern and irreligious sister:

“I don’t care!” she said stubbornly to Hilda at bedtime. “I know the penis is the most godly part of a man. . . . I know it is the penis which connects us with the stars and the sea and everything. It is the penis which touches the planets, and makes us feel their special light. I know it. I know it was the penis which really put the evening stars into my inside self. I used to look at the evening star, and think how lovely and wonderful it was. But now it’s in me as well as outside me, and I need hardly look at it. I am it. I don’t care what you say, it was the penis gave it me.”[27]

According to Daniélou, Shaivism regards the procreative purpose of sex as “a side show” – just as Lawrence does. Daniélou writes that the phallus has a dual role: “the inferior one of procreation and the superior one of contacting the divine state by means of the ecstasy caused by pleasure (ànanda). The orgasm is a ‘divine sensation.’ So whereas paternity attaches man to the things of the earth, the ecstasy of pleasure can reveal divine reality to him, leading him to detachment and spiritual realization.”[28]

The orgasm, for Lawrence as well as for Shaivism, is a religious experience in which selfhood is transcended and we become reabsorbed, momentarily, into the life mystery; connected to “the stars and the sea and everything.” Daniélou quotes another Shaivite text: “Every orgasm, every pleasure is a divine experience. The entire universe springs forth from enjoyment. Pleasure is at the origin of all that exists.”[29]

Just as Lawrence’s ideas about the metaphysical significance of the phallus and intercourse can be likened to Shaivism, his views about the use of sex as a means to “awakening” can be likened to Tantra. Tantra refers to the set of practical techniques and methods used to bring the individual to union with the divine source.

In the West, we tend to associate Tantra exclusively with a kind of “sex magic,” and although there are other forms of Tantra this is, in fact, the one that I am drawing on in making comparisons to Lawrence. Tantric sex actually involves a rather overwhelmingly complex collection of ritual preparations, mantras, and physical positions. None of these are truly relevant to our concerns here. Suffice it to say that the theory behind Tantric sex involves the belief that if intercourse is approached properly, with an understanding of the metaphysical significance of the act, it affords the participants the opportunity to achieve a state of transcendence.

They lose their sense of individuality and merge with each other, and through merging with each other—through bringing together the male and female natures—they participate in the creative power represented by Shiva. Again, the parallels to Lawrence are obvious. He too regarded the man and the woman as representing eternal male and female powers, and he saw in intercourse a way in which the two become one (“the highest achievement of time or eternity”) and in so doing, lose themselves in the life mystery.

Notes

[1] Quoted in Jeffrey Meyers, D. H. Lawrence: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 362.

[2] Quoted in Meyers, 367.

[3] Meyers, 369.

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious in Fantasia of the Unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (New York: Penguin, 1971), 106.

[5] Arthur Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Berg, 1988–90), vol. 3, 262.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix, ed. Edward McDonald (New York: Viking, 1968), 759 (“The Novel and the Feelings”).

[7] Quoted in Meyers, 362.

[8] Fantasia, 185.

[9] Fantasia, 106.

[10] Fantasia, 173.

[11] Fantasia, 106–07.

[12] Fantasia, 185.

[13] Fantasia, 102.

[14] Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, trans. Ladislaus Löb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 17.

[15] Fantasia, 96.

[16] Fantasia, 106–07.

[17] D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix II, ed. Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore (New York: Viking, 1971), 505 (“A Propos of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover’”).

[18] Fantasia, 106–07.

[19] D. H. Lawrence, John Thomas and Lady Jane (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 238.

[20] Phoenix II, 506 (“A Propos of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover’”).

[21] Alain Daniélou argues that the Greek Pan is equivalent to Shiva. See Alain Daniélou, The Phallus, trans. Jon Graham (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995), 47–48.

[22] Alain Daniélou, Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus, no translator credited (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992), 51.

[23] Linga Purána, 1.3.2–3. Quoted in Alain Daniélou, The Phallus, 11.

[24] Daniélou, The Phallus, 11–13.

[25] Quoted in Daniélou, Gods of Love and Ecstasy, 56.

[26] Ibid., 56.

[27] John Thomas and Lady Jane, 312.

[28] Daniélou, The Phallus, 18.

[29] Ibid., 18.

 

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Manfred Spitzer zur digitalen Demenz

Sieben Stunden, vierzehn Minuten – Manfred Spitzer zur digitalen Demenz

Ellen Kositza

Ex: http://www.sezession.de

Das ist schon was: Mit Manfred Spitzers Warnung vor der »digitalen Demenz« hat ein Buch die obersten Ränge der Verkaufslisten gestürmt, das keinesfalls einen moderaten Ton anstimmt. Der bedeutende Hirnforscher lädt nicht zur Mäßigung vor der Glotze und an den Schaltknöpfchen der Spielautomaten ein. Er nennt keine empfehlenswerten Computerspiele, er beziffert keine Zeitzonen, innerhalb derer die Beschäftigung mit der virtuellen Welt tolerabel (oder gar günstig) wäre.

Nein, Spitzer, sechsfacher Vater, sagt ganz radikal: Jede vor dem Bildschirm der digitalen Medien verbrachte Stunde ist für Kinder vergeudete Lebenszeit. Der Psychiatrieprofessor argumentiert sprachlich bisweilen reichlich hemdsärmelig (was das Buch publikumsfreundlich macht), aber er hat die Wissenschaft auf seiner Seite.

Man will es kaum glauben: Sieben Stunden und vierzehn Minuten täglich verbringen deutsche Neuntkläßler im Durchschnitt vor dem Fernsehen, dem Video, dem Internet und vor Computerspielen. Die Mattscheibe des Smartphones ist dabei nicht mal einbezogen. Ungläubig rechnet man nach, zählt Wochenend- und Ferienzeiten hinzu und glaubt am Ende der Bilanz. Wohl keiner kann besser und glaubwürdiger erklären als Spitzer, was solche 50-Stunden-Wochen mit dem jugendlichen Gehirn machen. In vierzehn Kapiteln legt der Hirnforscher dar, inwiefern vorgeblich pädagogisch wertvolles Baby-TV, der Computer im Klassenzimmer, das Freizeitvergnügen in »sozialen Netzwerken« und auf welche Weise das sogenannte Multitasking, die Möglichkeit des »Abspeicherns« (also Auslagerns aus der aktiven Tätigkeit) und Ballerspiele die neuronalen Netzwerke beeinflussen. Das Gehirn ist ein plastisches, flexibles Organ, es verändert sich gemäß seiner Beanspruchung. Unter dem Dauerfeuer der Impulse bahnen sich »Trampelpfade« durch das Hirn, die relativ unveränderbar sind. Ein Jugendlicher, der seine Aktivitäten größtenteils ins »Netz« verlagert, anstatt durch Sport, Theater, papierne Lektüre oder Handwerk seinen Willen, seine Kreativität und Meinungsbildung zu schulen, wird ziemlich sicher seine affektive Selbstkontrolle einbüßen. Streßsymptome (wie Depressionen und Schlaflosigkeit), soziale Auffälligkeit und Schulprobleme stehen als sichere Folgen bevor. Spitzer malt keineswegs freihändig den Teufel an die Wand, er operiert mit einer Vielzahl wissenschaftlicher Studien und untermalt die Folgen der digitalen (Hyper-)Aktivität mit eigenen Graphiken, die den angeschlagenen Alarmton untermauern.

Bisweilen untergräbt Spitzers polternde, wenn auch meist sympathische Radikalität die Nachvollziehbarkeit: Daß die Google-Suche einen Nutzer, der auf dem gesuchten Gebiet bislang ahnungslos ist, ratlos zurücklasse, stimmt definitiv nicht. Susanne Gaschke hatte sich – ohne in ihren Schlußfolgerungen moderater zu sein – 2009 bereits gründlich und womöglich eloquenter mit digitalen Verdummungstendenzen auseinandergesetzt (Sezession 30/2009). Gaschkes vortreffliches Buch fehlt in Spitzers Literaturliste, dafür finden sich dort Verweise auf 28 Spitzersche Publikationen. Klar, der Mann ist vom Fach! Für Eltern, die ihre Kinder ohnehin vernünftig erziehen – also unter weitestgehender Umschiffung digitaler Ablenkmedien –, bietet das Buch vor allem eine Bestätigung und eine fundierte Argumentationsgrundlage. Die konkreten Tips zum adäquaten Hirntraining, die Spitzer bietet, mögen banal erscheinen, sind aber goldrichtig: Kleine Kinder profitieren von simplen Fingerspielen mehr als von Laptops im Kindergarten! Stete Übungen der Selbstkontrolle (erst ein Lied, auch wenn der Kuchen auf dem Tisch noch so lockt) dienen der Immunisierung gegen Streß! Singen Sie viel und laut!

Manfred Spitzer: Digitale Demenz. Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen, München: Droemer 2012. 368 S., 19.99 €

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Digitale dementie

Digitale dementie: Geheugen jongeren permanent aangetast door smartphones en pc's

 

Xander 

 

Jongeren door internetcontacten steeds minder empathisch - Straling mobieltjes: Verhoogd risico op hersentumor, hartaandoening, Alzheimer, MS , Parkinson, autisme

De snelle omschakeling naar een digitale samenleving blijkt steeds vaker grote en veelal permanente gevolgen te hebben voor onze lichamelijke en geestelijke gezondheid.

Artsen in Zuid Korea, het land dat al sinds de jaren '90 voorop loopt bij de invoering van computers, maken zich zorgen over een nieuwe en snel groeiende aandoening die vooral jongeren aantast: digitale dementie. Het blijkt dat het geheugen van steeds meer jonge mensen door het veelvuldig en langdurig gebruik van pc's, spelcomputers en smartphones ernstig wordt aangetast, zozeer dat er zelfs sprake lijkt van een hersenbeschadiging of psychiatrische ziekte. Sommige jongeren kunnen niet eens meer een telefoonnummer onthouden.

De vooruitstrevende digitalisering van de Zuid Koreaanse samenleving, zowel op de werkplek, de scholen als in de privésfeer, blijkt een zorgwekkende keerzijde te hebben. 'Het te vaak gebruiken van smartphones en (spel)computers belemmert de ontwikkeling van het brein,' zegt Byun Gi-won, wetenschapper van het Balance Brain Centre in Seoul. 'Zware gebruikers ontwikkelen met name de linkerkant van hun brein, waardoor de rechterkant onaangesproken of onderontwikkeld blijft.'

Extreem vroege dementie, emotionele onderontwikkeling

De rechterkant van het brein is verbonden met het concentratievermogen. Als deze helft zich niet voldoende ontwikkelt krijgen mensen grote problemen met opletten en hun geheugen, wat in maar liefst 15% van de gevallen kan leiden tot het extreem vroeg intreden van dementie. Daarnaast zijn deze aangetaste mensen vaak emotioneel onderontwikkeld, waarbij kinderen hogere risico's lopen dan volwassenen omdat hun hersenen nog niet volgroeid zijn.

Volgens het ministerie van Wetenschap, ICT en Toekomstplanning bezit ruim 67% van de Zuid Koreanen een smartphone, het hoogste percentage ter wereld. Onder tieners is dit 64%, een gigantische groei ten opzichte van de 21,4% in 2011. Zuid Korea was het eerste land ter wereld waar ook op de basisscholen massaal papier en schoolbord werden vervangen door computers.

'Schade hersenen onomkeerbaar'

De Duitse neurowetenschapper dr. Manfred Spitzer schreef in 2012 het boek 'Digitale Dementie'. Hierin waarschuwde hij ouders en leraren voor de gevaren als kinderen te veel tijd doorbrengen met hun laptop, smartphone of andere elektronische apparaten. De schade die wordt aangebracht aan de hersenen is volgens Spitzer onomkeerbaar, reden waarom hij opriep tot een verbod op het gebruik van digitale apparaten op Duitse scholen.

'Kinderlijk gedrag' door sociale netwerken

Lady Greenfield, een gezaghebbende professor synaptische farmacologie aan het Lincoln college in Oxford (Engeland), waarschuwde in 2009 in het Britse Hogerhuis (1e Kamer) dat door de ervaringen die kinderen op sociale netwerksites opdoen zij 'verstoken blijven van samenhangende taal en lange-termijn betekenis. Als gevolg zullen de hersenen van de kinderen, als ze straks volwassen zijn, nog steeds op een kinderlijke manier functioneren.'

Volgens haar veroorzaken sociale netwerksites een verkorting van de aandachtsboog van kinderen. 'Als het jonge brein al vroeg wordt blootgesteld aan een wereld van snelle aktie en reactie, van plotseling opflitsende nieuwe beelden en foto's door een simpele druk op een knop, dan raken de hersenen er aan gewend om binnen zulke korte tijdsperiodes te reageren. Maar als er dan in de echte wereld niet onmiddellijk reacties volgen, dan krijgen we afwijkend gedrag en noemen dat vervolgens 'attentention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder', AD(H)D.'

Erosie van eigen identiteit

Greenfield zei dat meer computeren en minder lezen van boeken leidt tot het verlies van empathie, van inlevingsvermogen. De professor vindt het vreemd dat de maatschappij de erosie van onze identiteit als gevolg van sociale netwerksites 'enthousiast omarmt'. Volgens haar leiden sites als Facebook en Hyves ertoe dat mensen het onderscheid tussen hun online identiteit en de 'echte wereld' beginnen te verliezen. Greenfield stelt dat de volwassenen van de volgende generatie daarom hun identiteit zullen ontlenen aan de reacties van anderen op henzelf.

Sociale netwerksites kunnen een 'constante herbevestiging geven dat er naar je geluisterd wordt, je (h)erkend wordt, belangrijk bent,' vervolgde Greenfield. 'Dit is echter gelijktijdig gekoppeld aan een vervreemding van de druk van een écht face-to-face gesprek, een echte real-life conversatie, die veel 'gevaarlijker' is, omdat je geen gelegenheid hebt om een tijdje over een slim of gevat antwoord na te denken.' (5)

Narcistisch gedrag, gebrek aan empathie

Dr. Ablow, Amerikaanse psychiater en New York Times auteur van diverse bestsellers, schreef in 2010 dat veelvuldig chatten ertoe leidt dat mensen op den duur steeds slechter in staat zijn om diepgaande 'real life' relaties aan te gaan, omdat men gewend is internetcontacten die 'moeilijk' doen simpel weg te klikken.

Ook hij schreef de explosie van AD(H)D onder jongeren mede toe aan de verschuiving onder jongeren naar digitale contacten. 'Veel moderne jongeren vertonen narcistisch gedrag en denken dat zij de sterren van hun eigen digitale levens'soap' zijn... De veel grotere slachting zal bestaan uit de stille vernietiging van de waardevolle interpersoonlijke alchemie die we 'menselijke relaties' noemen. Die zijn gebaseerd op empathie en het besef dat je altijd te maken hebt met iemand die een gevoel heeft en daarom met respect behandeld moet worden,' aldus Ablow.

Mensen online als wegwerpartikelen behandeld

'Nu dreigen we echter een belangrijke grens over te gaan door buitengewoon 'giftige' boodschappen tot ons te nemen die het tegenovergestelde zeggen, namelijk dat mensen wegwerpartikelen zijn, wier enige waarde is dat ze misschien maar enkele minuten onze aandacht kunnen vasthouden.' Naast dr. Ablow waarschuwen psychiaters over de hele wereld dat met name jongeren steeds minder in staat lijken om complexe, duurzame relaties aan te gaan, omdat het hen aan voldoende empathie (inlevingsvermogen) ontbreekt. (2)

Ook de snelle verruwing op blogs en forums in de afgelopen jaren, waaronder helaas ook deze site, is een duidelijk bewijs van deze digitale afstomping en ontaarding. Steeds meer mensen hebben er moeite mee om op normale, beschaafde en respectvolle wijze op artikelen of andere bezoekers waar zij het niet mee eens zijn te reageren. Velen zijn niet (meer) in staat met inhoudelijke en onderbouwde argumenten te reageren en grijpen daarom terug op ordinaire verwensingen en grove scheldpartijen.

Hartaandoening, Alzheimer, MS, Parkinson, hersentumor

Na Japanse, Australische, Finse, Zweedse en Zwitserse wetenschappers concludeerde in 2009 ook het European Research Institute for Electronic Components in Boekarest dat de straling die door mobieltjes wordt afgegeven onder andere kan leiden tot hartaandoeningen en nierstenen. Onderzoekers van de universiteit in het Zweedse Lund ontdekten dat ook de hersenen kunnen worden aangetast, waardoor mensen sneller Alzheimer, Multiple Sclerosis en Parkinson kunnen krijgen. Australische wetenschappers waarschuwden dat in het jaar 2020 zo'n 2 miljard (!) mensen een hersentumor kunnen ontwikkelen door het veelvuldig bellen met mobieltjes.  (4)

Inmiddels is er ook bewijs geleverd dat de sterke groei van autisme mede wordt veroorzaakt door de forse toename van RF (Radio Frequentie) straling in de atmosfeer, die schade aanricht aan de hersenen van ongeboren en jonge kinderen. Het aantal baby's met autisme groeide van 1 op de 150 in 2002 naar ongeveer 1 op de 50 tien jaar later.

In juni 2011 classificeerde de Wereld Gezondheid Organisatie (WHO) de straling die door de inmiddels bijna 7 miljard mobieltjes (2011: 4,6 miljard) op de wereld wordt geproduceerd dan ook als 'mogelijk kankerverwekkend'. Hiermee werden mobieltjes in dezelfde categorie geplaatst als lood en chloroform. De WHO concludeerde dat frequente blootstelling aan straling van mobieltjes gelinkt kan worden aan kwaadaardige hersentumoren.

Straling verstoort DNA reparatie

In een recente presentatie toonde ook Devra Lee Davis, voormalig wetenschapper aan de National Academy of Sciences, de gevaren van mobieltjes aan. Davis dacht aanvankelijk dat de straling geen kwaad kon, totdat ze na uitvoerig onderzoek tot geheel andere conclusies kwam. De impact op het lichaam wordt niet veroorzaakt door het lage energieverbruik van mobieltjes, maar door de pulserende straling die ze uitzenden en die de reparatie van beschadigd DNA in het lichaam kan verstoren.

Davis zei ook dat mobieltjes de oorzaak zijn van kankertumoren die ontstaan op plaatsen die veel bloot staan aan direct contact (ook met kleding ertussen) met het apparaat. Epidemioloog en gezondheidswetenschapper George Carlo, oprichter van het Science and Public Policy Institute, stelde al jaren geleden dat de industrie nooit serieus onderzoek heeft verricht naar de gevolgen van mobiele straling. Na een 6 jaar durend onderzoek dat $ 28 miljoen kostte concludeerde Carlo in 1999 dat de straling dermate ernstig is, dat in 2010 jaarlijks zo'n 500.000 Amerikanen kanker zouden krijgen als direct gevolg van het gebruik van mobiele telefoons.

'Nieuwe generatie smartphonechips zeer schadelijk'

Vorig jaar sloegen Amerikaanse wetenschappers alarm over de nieuwe generatie microchips die voor smartphones wordt ontwikkeld. Volgens dr. Boian Alexandrov van het Center for Nonlinear Studies van het Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico kunnen de terahertz (Thz) golven die deze chips uitzenden het menselijke DNA beschadigen en zelfs vernietigen. Deze technologie wordt nu al dagelijks toegepast bij het scannen van passagiers op luchthavens. Dr. Alexandrov vreest dat als deze chips in smartphones worden toegepast, er in de toekomst miljoenen mensen ernstig ziek zullen worden of zelfs zullen sterven. (3)

Xander

(1) The Telegraph
(2) Xandernieuws 05-03-2010
(3) Xandernieuws 11-05-2012
(4) 02-01-09: Opnieuw bewijs dat mobieltjes schadelijk zijn voor gezondheid
(5) 27-02-09: Hersenexpert: Sociale netwerksites leiden tot 'kinderlijk gedrag'

Zie ook o.a.:

01-01-13: Nomofobie -angst dat je mobieltje het niet doet- in opmars
08-04-09: Duitse wetenschappers waarschuwen tegen schadelijke effecten zendstations digitale TV

MICHEL ONFRAY contre les dogmes freudiens

MICHEL ONFRAY contre les dogmes freudiens

Pierre Le Vigan
Ex: http://metamag.fr/

 

Fidèle à sa méthode Michel Onfray cherche à opposer en tous domaines – ici la psychanalyse – les « autoritaires » d’un côté, les « libertaires-libertins » de l’autre. On peut le dire aussi différemment : les orthodoxes normatifs d’un côté, les hétérodoxes hédonistes de l’autre. On a compris : ceux qui ont précédé et préparé Onfray, et ceux qui ont précédés les ennemis d’Onfray. Pour être un peu sommaire ce clivage est  éclairant. Il met du désordre dans un faux ordre, travail philosophique s’il en est.

 

                                                                                Michel Onfray et Sigmund Freund

 

Dans Le crépuscule d’une idole, Michel Onfray avait produit une critique radicale – et retentissante ! – de Freud. Il avait certes repris les réflexions d’un Pierre Debray-Ritzen (La psychanalyse cette imposture, 1991) et bien entendu du Livre noir de la psychanalyse (2005) mais avec un écho plus grand. 

 

Otto Gross toxicomane et vitaliste 

Il s’attache à autre chose dans Les freudiens hérétiques. Son but est de défendre 3 figures de psychanalystes fâchés avec Freud. Le premier, Otto Gross, fils d’un criminologue conservateur, se veut révolutionnaire. Il se livre à toutes sortes d’expériences limites. Il oppose le « refoulement toxique du dionysisme individuel par l’apollinisme social. » à la nécessaire libération des forces dionysiaques- ce qui n’est pas faux mais renvoie à la structure de toute société. Il politise et socialise ainsi la question de l’inconscient. En termes freudiens, il prêche la mise à l’écart du surmoi au profit du ça.  Les pulsions primitives et vitales sont donc valorisées au détriment des normes sociales. « Otto Gross (…) ne se contente pas d’en appeler à une hétérosexualité libre, il souhaite également en finir avec la division des sexes et l’inscription des corps dans une logique dite aujourd’hui gendrée (ou genrée), avec d’un côté les hommes, de l’autre les femmes. » On voit qu’il ne suffisait pas de s’éloigner de Freud pour ne pas professer des absurdités ! Otto Gross est trouvé mort en 1920. Un infirmier note : « Le docteur en médecine Otto Gross, âgé de 42 ans et de religion mosaïque, est décédé à 5 heures du matin. Il a couché durant la nuit dernière dans un passage inutilisé conduisant à un entrepôt. Une pneumonie, aggravée par la sous-alimentation, ne pouvait plus être traitée ».

 

Otto Gross

Deuxième figure : Wilhelm Reich 

 

Issu d’une famille juive autrichienne très assimilé, proche de Gross quant aux idées, il «inscrit l’inconscient non pas dans un univers purement métapsychologique, mais dans un monde sociologique et politique. » (Michel Onfray). Autre différence, contrairement à Freud, il soigne surtout des pauvres.  

 

 

Sa thèse centrale est qu’ « il n’y a qu’un seul mal chez les névrosés : le manque de satisfaction sexuelle totale répétée. » Selon W. Reich la « mauvaise sexualité » vient du capitalisme. D’où la nécessité d’une révolution/libération sexuelle anticapitaliste. Il croit trouver l’Eden dans la Russie bolchévique, Lénine ayant déclaré que « le communisme ne doit pas apporter l’ascèse mais la joie de vivre, la vigueur et également une vie amoureuse comblée » (ce qui est peut-être beaucoup demander à la politique !).  Comme Rousseau, Wilhelm Reich croit qu’à l’origine des temps historiques l’acte sexuel était simple et sans complexe. Pourquoi ? Parce que dans le communisme primitif tout était la propriété commune de tous. Wilhelm Reich mourra en 1957 dans la cellule d’une prison américaine. Il avait écrit : « La plupart des psychanalystes étaient eux-mêmes des malades souffrants  de troubles sexuels, et cela n’était pas sans influer sur leur évolution. » (La fonction de l’orgasme).

  

Erich Fromm contre le mythe freudien de la pulsion de mort

Erich Fromm, le troisième hétérodoxe d’Onfray est sans doute le plus intéressant des trois - et le moins malade. Juif allemand, passionné par le Talmud, installé aux Etats-Unis à partir de 1934, il critique la société technicienne et cybernétique, refuse la notion de pulsion de mort telle que l’entendait Freud, et récuse l’hermétisme et l’intellectualisme distanciateur de Lacan et des freudiens orthodoxes. Il applique la méthode nietzschéenne de recherche de la généalogie d’une pensée pour la comprendre (La mission de Sigmund Freud). C’est l’application du « D’où parles-tu ? » à Freud.  Il en conclut que la philosophie de Freud n’est rien d’autre que sa confession et son autobiographie. Pour Erich Fromm, Freud a inscrit toute sa vie sous le signe de l’avoir : « l’argent, la réputation, les honneurs, les richesses ». Selon Fromm la psychanalyse est devenue « un produit de remplacement de la religion pour les classes moyennes, ou tant soit peu supérieures, des villes, qui ne souhaitaient pas faire un effort radical plus complet. » Ce qui n’est pas mal vu. 

 

 

Erich Fromm fait l’apologie de la pulsion de vie aussi bien contre les dérèglements psychiques tels dit-il la pornographie ou le sadisme généralisé que contre les dérèglements sociaux tels la folie consumériste, le culte des gadgets, le nihilisme des valeurs. Toutes idées qui ne sont pas sans évoquer Herbert Marcuse ou Yvan Illich. Michel Onfray conclut son livre par un démontage aussi hilarant que convaincant de l’imposture lacanienne. « La chape de plomb du freudo-lacanisme fut une malédiction pour la scène intellectuelle [française]» écrit Michel Onfray. Une lecture roborative.

 

Michel Onfray, Les freudiens hérétiques. Contre histoire de la philosophie 8, 388 p., 20,90 €, Grasset, 2013.

L’impensé de la théorie du genre

L’impensé de la théorie du genre

par Marc Gébelin

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org/

Avant d’entrer dans le sujet, je précise que je suis historien de formation et que je « cherche sur l’homme », suis anthropologue. Ceci afin non de donner à ma parole une autorité mais pour situer le lieu où je place le débat qui va se révéler choquant pour certains. Je précise en outre que contrairement à l’homo latin qui a donné humus, anthropôn désigne celui « qui voit en haut ». Le Parlement vient d’adopter le mariage homosexuel. Il a pour lointaine origine, il faut le savoir, la théorie du genre. Cette décision est historique.

La théorie du genre est une invention féminine étatsunienne. Elle est, disons-le sans crainte de faire hurler les suppôts, dégénérée. Dégénérée au sens d’une incapacité à générer, à régénérer. L’américanisme étatsunien est un Système en dégénérescence. Sur le modèle pourtant de la réplique célèbre « Sire, pire qu’un crime c’est une faute », plus que dégénérée, elle est irrationnelle et folle. Elle revient à dire que si la femme n’était pas formatée par l’éducation pour être femme elle serait… quoi ? un homme évidemment, pas un ouistiti ! Donnez des voitures rouges, un marteau, des clous, à une petite fille et la barbe lui poussera après 14 ans ! offrez une poupée bleu-virginal au bambin turbulent, il deviendra bon papa, féministe et peut-être homosexuel non-violent! Dans la première hypothèse, notre chirurgie prométhéenne, lui donnera le membre désiré, dans la seconde « la femme sera l’avenir de l’homme ». Au fond, que souhaite cette « gendrie » ? C’est simple, elle veut un monde uniquement masculin car ces femmes là ont leur féminité en horreur. Ces menstrues, ces enfantements, cet allaitement, cet « esclavage millénaire », elles n’en veulent plus! Ce masculin, qu’elles trouvent haïssable quand il est revêtu d’un corps d’homme devient magnifique déguisé en Elles !

Si la théorie gendrique, qui n’est qu’une suite en mal majeur de l’œuvre insipide de madame de Beauvoir, prétend que les filles élevées « comme des femmes » le deviennent (c'est-à-dire ces femmes esclaves de l’homme), elle aura du mal à affirmer que les hommes ne sont pas eux aussi élevés « comme des hommes » et que donc, leur machisme, plus appris qu’inné, ne devrait en aucune façon les rendre capable du moindre féminisme alors que justement notre époque en est pleine de ces hommes dont le parti pris -à l’insu de leur plein gré !- crève les yeux, qu’ils soient sociologues, éducateurs, journalistes, ministres. Ils hantent les médias, les écoles, les services sociaux, les ministères, les tribunaux, la police, et… l’armée!

Inversement, ce qui est contestable dans l’éducation des femmes parce que produisant des « esclaves », peut difficilement faire comprendre qu’elles soient devenues féministes malgré cette éducation et qu’en ce qui concerne les hommes élevés comme des machistes il devrait être impossible qu’ils deviennent des féministes et plus encore de vraies femmes, si l’on pense aux transsexuels recourant eux aussi au bistouri pour se faire ouvrir une fente dans le corps et surtout dans l’esprit. Des hommes féminisés, des hommes désireux d’être femme et se comportant comme elles, il y en a toujours eu et il y en aura toujours et ce de plus en plus, vu la loi Taubira désormais votée par les FLR, les féministes-libéraux-républicains (gauche et droite mêlées) qui veulent nous faire croire (et se faire croire), qu’ils votent pour l’« égalité » alors qu’ils votent pour l’abolition des sexes, confirmant en cela la prédiction de Freud, plutôt humoristique à l’époque, qui désormais tourne au cauchemar.

Un « machiste » par contre, c'est-à-dire un homme éduqué par une mère aimante mais pas possessive et un père droit mais pas dur, est quelqu’un qui ne deviendra ni un "pédé", ni une "tante", termes interdits selon la loi car homophobes, mais qui avaient le mérite, (pour ceux qui ont passé la cinquantaine), de situer l’enjeu avec une bienveillante ironie. Alors bien sûr, dès que vous utilisez ces termes, non seulement vous êtes mis au ban de la bien pensance mais certains psychanalystes féministes déclarés, vous envoient à la figure leur verdict : Vous êtes homophobe, cher monsieur, parce vous refoulez votre homosexualité !... c’est pour ça que vous la repoussez avec horreur !... Refouler, notion psychanalytique devenue une sorte de « chef d’accusation », appréciation psychologique tombant au niveau du juridique.

A contrario, l’homme féministe (outre le fait qu’il a été éduqué par une mère castratrice et un père sans autorité, sans phallus au sens freudien) est un homme qui, si on y réfléchit deux secondes, n’a pas eu beaucoup de peine à le devenir pour la simple raison que, n’ayant pas ce phallus que le père aurait dû lui transmettre, mais possédant quand même un organe percé au bas de son dos, en est préoccupé. Et les psy, d’autres psy, savent aussi que ce « trou-la-la » là (humour qui je l’espère n’hérissera personne), quand on y pense trop, qu’on lui pose comme jadis le sphinx des questions métaphysiques, il finit lui aussi par questionner l’esprit juché au sommet du même dos en lui murmurant : Ne suis-je pas une femme comme tout le monde ? Si cet homme vit avec une féministe, les chances existent qu’il se laisse aller à l’homosexualité et devienne la "tante" déjà mentionnée, qu’il quitte son épouse et aille faire couple avec celui qui le confirmera dans son choix du même. Ça sera souvent celui qui fera de lui la femme qu’il a rêvé d’être, celui que pudiquement on appelle sodomite, terrorisé qu’on est à l’idée de dire avec des mots grossiers, des choses grossières : celui qui l’enc… Le sodomite étant (hormis le héros sadien qui est souvent un fou furieux meurtrier) celui qui, récusant ou craignant l’orifice féminin et le féminin en général, se dévoue pour faire plaisir à celui qui veut être une femme sans en avoir les organes ni les vertus et qui, à ce titre, lève l’interdit, l’angoisse, que tout mâle ressent devant le féminin et qui, pour cette raison, n’hésite pas à souiller son sexe, en l’introduisant - charitablement il est vrai - dans un anus masculin.

« Vous oubliez la fellation », rétorquent les poètes, ces bonnes âmes qui s’efforcent -sans être sûr d’y arriver-, de ne pas porter de jugement, de rester neutres, « scientifiques » ! C’est en effet une autre option de l’homosexualité masculine. L’ampoule rectale – peu ragoûtante, il faut bien le dire, y compris pour ceux qui la préfèrent à d’autres vestibules – est alors évitée ainsi que le risque de contamination que la médecine souligne en invitant aux préservatifs. Le goût de l’impétrant est invité à se convertir à sa propre substance comme jadis Atoum-Rê le dieu primordial. Et je ne fais pas cette escapade dans l’histoire pour distraire, j’essaye de faire image, de faire imaginer ceux qui ont encore un sens métahistorique et artistique. C’est à ces époques révolues – et plus loin encore – qu’il faut faire retour pour saisir ce mystère.

Atoum-Rê, dieu originel égyptien, comme l’est le couple Ouranos-Gaia des Grecs, est une des clés de cette énigme. S’enfantant lui-même il vint au monde, sur la colline primordiale. Ceci fait, il continue et le texte ajoute: « Ayant pris sa semence dans sa bouche, il cracha ou éternua, créant Shou, le dieu de l'air, et Tefnout, la déesse de l'humidité ». Atoum-Rê (son double nom indique sa double capacité comme pour le couple ouranien-chtonien) est donc l’initiateur de la première distinction mâle/femelle, le discriminateur de ce qui avant en lui était uni. On a bien sûr une histoire similaire au début de la Genèse, à laquelle le lecteur se reportera. L’Atoum-Rê d’il y a dix mille ou cent mille ans (nos repères temporels habituels se brouillent), est un briseur de rêve, celui précisément fusionnel du Féminin. Rêve qu’on a le droit ici encore de dire dé-généré puisque nos féministes d’un drôle de genre génèrent du sens avec ce mot genre (genus, generis) qui engendre la confusion puisqu’il sous-tend le physique et la… morale. Curieusement, on retrouve ce genre mentionné dans le traité de l’Union européenne reformulé (1), comme dans la loi taubira à l’issue de laquelle l’état civil ne devrait plus indiquer un père homme et une mère femme, mais un genre désexualisé, appelé parent 1 et parent 2. Pourquoi pas parente d’ailleurs ?! On aurait deux Femen, « qu’elles soient hommes ou femmes » !

L’homosexualité masculine exclusive, permanente, n’est plus une maladie depuis que l’OMS l’a déclassifiée et il serait donc criminel de le prétendre, mais rien ne nous empêche de la dire régressive. Permanente ou intermittente, elle exprime l’angoisse-fascination de l’homme devant la violence d’une sexualité ambivalente et son désir de la nier tout en… l’explorant ! Elle est alors un piment nécessaire aux aventureux pour comprendre par action vécue et non par théories, fussent-elle gendreuses, ce qui s’agite, dans leur subconscient. L’homosexualité féminine par contre, est moins taboue, scandalise moins le commun, car n’invite pas à se nourrir de l’ « étrange substance du dieu ».

Dans l’acte de fellation, ce qui sauve l’être humain-femme, contrairement à l’homme, c’est l’absorption consciente de son principe opposé, le sperme, hostie unique en son genre que seul le masculin peut lui offrir. Absorber le « jus divin », s’en constituer ou s’en reconstituer, se « masculiniser » par lui de façon fantasmatique, peut alors être vu dans la perspective du geste atoumien comme redécouverte par notre Eve moderne de l’instinct divin originel. Pour être Elle, elle s’abouche au Dieu Originel, recule dans l’archaïque, revient au « premier matin du monde », dans le Monde d’Avant qu’Il Fut. Elle visite la colline primordiale, lointain « mont de Vénus » quand Vénus-Aphrodite était vivante et « plongeait dans l’écume » (aphros = écume, dutès = qui plonge).

Pour l’homosexuel homme, dont l’être féminin caché jalouse celle qui seule a ce privilège, les choses s’inversent. S’il s’y livre, ce « retour » fait de lui un ouroboros mimétique, falsifié, où se brise la dynamique de la bisexualité, un Narcisse charnel si insatisfait de l’image de son corps qu’il doit trébucher sur « sa chair identique », sur le corps du presque autrui, être à lui-même et pour l’autre, pierre de scandale, se compromettre en impliquant l’autre, s’acter out sur la scène publique pour y être « puni » une seconde fois après s’être puni lui-même dans le secret brûlant de son manque. Explorer plus avant cette thèse (2) dans ses dimensions historiques, anthropologiques, psychologiques ou médicales, exigerait un développement très long. C’est pour l’instant inenvisageable de la proposer à la plupart des sexués humains aveuglés par la propagande mondialiste uniformisante, sauf à quelques happy few qui ne manifestent pas, n’agitent pas d’arc-en-ciel multicolore, mais portent peut-être sur leur front des « lettres de feu ».

Marc Gébelin

Notes

(1) Initialement, l’article 2 du Traité sur l’Union européenne dispose que “l’Union est fondée sur les valeurs de respect de la dignité humaine, de liberté, de démocratie, d’égalité ...” Or, dans la résolution du 12 décembre 2012 sur la situation des droits fondamentaux dans l’UE, les parlementaires européens ont légèrement reformulé cet article. Ils considèrent que ce dernier “fonde l’Union sur une communauté de valeurs indivisibles et universelles de respect de la dignité humaine, de liberté, de démocratie, d’égalité, de genre“.

(2) Des ethnologues ont approché le mystère sans lui apporter des explications convaincantes. Reprenant l’accusation que je dénonçais plus haut, serait-il absurde de leur retourner le compliment d’être « aveuglés par leur homosexualité latente » ? ce qui, je m’empresse de le souligner, ne serait pas une condamnation. Maurice Godelier en est un exemple. Ex-marxiste, donc féministe (puisque le marxisme est un féminisme, une philosophie positionnant le non-agir plus haut que l’agir, l’immanent plus authentique que le transcendant, l’existence plus certaine que l’essence, bref un matérialisme), il tente d’éclairer dans son livre "La production des grands hommes", le système des Baruyas de Papouasie qui vivent une homosexualité masculine initiatique adossée à une domination des hommes sur les femmes qui, toutefois, c’est lui qui souligne, est loin d’être totale. Fidèle à son préjugé de départ qu’il mondialise, il tente de générer une théorie globale où l’homme-dominateur-prétentieux-de-la-femme, est le fil rouge. Il a donc approuvé le fameux « mariage-pour-tous » comme Françoise Héritier, ethnologue de renom elle aussi, mais qui a l’« excuse », elle, d’être une femme. Il était piquant de voir au Palais du Luxembourg, cet hiver, ces deux prophètes de la modernité essayant de convaincre les sénateurs du bien fondé d’une « loi » qui déjà, seulement par son intitulé (mariage pour tous et non mariage homosexuel), montre son mensonge et son désir corollaire de tromper. Godelier, incapable de subsumer son marxisme communisant, en une théorie plus haute qui, tout en tenant compte de la mécanique qui entraine les sociétés humaines à leur insu, n’essaye même pas d’y insérer la transcendance comme le font les grands penseurs tels Shakespeare, Borges ou De Retz, cités dans l’article sur le Kairos.

Psychopathologie : une introduction phénoménologique de Georges Charbonneau

Pierre Le Vigan:

Psychopathologie : une introduction phénoménologique de Georges Charbonneau

Auteur d’un ouvrage sur les personnalités hystériques, le psychiatre et phénoménologue Georges Charbonneau  anime aussi la revue Le Cercle herméneutique. Il vient de publier un livre qui condense ses réflexions depuis plus de 20 ans. C’est aussi le fruit des travaux de l’école de phénoménologie psychopathologique. Cette école, parfois aussi appelée psychothérapie existentielle, reste marquée par les noms d’Eugène Minkowski (Traité de psychopathologie), Ludwig Binswanger (Mélancolie et manie, Trois formes manquées de la présence humaine), Hubertus Tellenbach (La mélancolie), Wolfgang Blankenburg (La perte de l’évidence naturelle),  Arthur Tatossian (La phénoménologie des psychoses) et quelques autres. En toile de fond c’est le Martin Heidegger d’Etre et temps (1927) dont les hypothèses sont sollicitées et en quelque sorte remises au travail. 

Le premier tome de l’ouvrage de Charbonneau est essentiellement consacré aux névroses. Il concerne aussi les personnalités pathologiques. Le second tome est consacré aux psychoses : délire et paranoïa. Il aborde donc les crises du Soi, ce qu’on appelle l’ipséité. L’ouvrage remplit pour l’essentiel son cahier des charges : ouvrir un tableau articulé et dialectique des manifestations psychopathologiques et de leurs significations comme déformation, ou altération, de la présence humaine. Certes, le plan traduit quelques flottements : les dépressions non mélancoliques donc non psychotiques sont ainsi traitées dans le tome II essentiellement consacré aux psychoses ; elles eussent été plus à leur place dans le tome I, à côté du chapitre sur la fatigue et ses différentes formes.

Sans doute aussi, l’usage répété de certains termes « bricolés » (ruptivité, nostrité, mienneté, chacunité, sienneté…)   peut agacer : les ressources de la langue française offrent bien des possibilités et c’est la grandeur d’intellectuels généralistes comme Alain Finkielkraut, Luc Ferry,  André Comte-Sponville, Ludovic Maubreuil ou Eric Werner d’énoncer des choses subtiles avec les mots de tout le monde et dans une langue compréhensible par tout homme de bonne volonté. L’usage de mots complexes ou pseudo-innovants vise bien souvent à créer une barrière artificielle, qui n’est autre qu’une barrière sociale de distinction au sens de Pierre Bourdieu, et crée une désagréable atmosphère d’élitisme autoproclamé.

Il n’en reste pas moins que le lecteur aurait tort d’en rester à ce possible et légitime agacement, non plus qu’au fait que le numéro de Krisis sur la psychologie n’est pas cité alors que les proximités de certaines des analyses développées avec celles du livre de G. Charbonneau sont évidentes et connues de l’auteur.  Qu’importe. Krisis veut justement dire jugement, et ce sont les idées qu’il faut juger. Or, dans le présent ouvrage, l’analyse des malaises dans l’homme, des délires, des décrochages existentiels, des ruptures d’avec le monde commun, de l’hystérie en termes de position dans l’espace, des pathologies de la personnalité en termes d’expérience du monde, et en termes d’analyse de l’humeur  c'est-à-dire le thymique, constituent de vrais points d’appui pour chacun d’entre nous, confronté à notre fragilité d’être-jeté-dans-le-monde.

Par ailleurs, des développements de concepts sont bienvenus, tels l’historialité, l’auroréal et le vespéral (ou, pour le dire plus simplement, le matinal et le couchant) qui, pour avoir déjà été analysées (souvent par la sémiotique, avec notamment Jacques Fontanille et Claude Zilberberg) avaient rarement été synthétisés de manière complète et dans une perspective unificatrice. Un livre indispensable pour mieux se comprendre, soi-même et les autres, soi-même avec les autres.

Pierre Le Vigan.

Georges Charbonneau, Introduction à la psychopathologie phénoménologique, MJW féditions, diffusion Vrin, tome I, 236 pages, 20 E, tome II, 215 pages, 20 E.

Pierre Le Vigan est auteur de Le malaise est dans l’homme. Psychopathologie et souffrances psychiques de l'homme moderne, Avatar, 2010, 195 p. , 22 €. www.avatareditions.com

Les mécanismes psycho-sociaux de l’aliénation néolibérale

par Olivier Labouret

Ex: http://mecanoblog.wordpress.com/

Comment penser et affronter les bouleversements impensables qui nous affectent aujourd’hui ?

On va chercher à comprendre comment le néolibéralisme nous aliène tous collectivement, certes, mais surtout chacun d’entre nous, individuellement. Pas seulement les couches populaires, les Français moyens, les « beaufs », les lecteurs de Gala, les spectateurs de TF1 ou les électeurs qui marinent, mais vous, moi, nous tous… Tant qu’on nie cette évidence que chacun d’entre nous est étroitement, inconsciemment aurait dit Freud, conditionné par les valeurs égoïstes de la compétition marchande, tant qu’on n’a pas compris que les bouleversements qui nous affectent ne sont pas seulement de nature économique et sociale, mais de nature psychologique et individuelle, c’est à dire s’immiscent en nous jusqu’à influencer notre pensée elle-même, comment peut-on prétendre faire de l’éducation populaire, concrètement, comment accomplir une quelconque transition ? En réalité, la guerre économique est aussi une guerre psychologique. Et si l’on veut penser autrement, sortir du déni de réalité dominant, guérir du « capitalisme cognitif » qui doit faire de nous les meilleurs sur le marché de l’emploi, du savoir et de la renommée, ici sur le campus du Mirail comme ailleurs, il faut connaître parfaitement l’ennemi, même et surtout quand il est tellement sournois qu’il s’est tapi à l’intérieur de soi, dans les recoins de son psychisme, ou ce qu’on nomme aujourd’hui communément tel.

Au fond, la question est de comprendre comment la loi du marché a finalement fait pour rentrer subrepticement, mais au sens propre, à l’intérieur du cerveau, de nos cerveaux… Car ce n’est pas un vain mot, quand on sait qu’une discipline nouvelle a vu le jour et a été adoptée par les plus hauts conseillers des gouvernements occidentaux : la neuro-économie. Ces économistes au pouvoir ont intégré la technique comportementale et les neurosciences à leurs travaux. Un rapport du Centre d’analyse stratégique de 2010, officine d’experts patentés aux ordres du Premier ministre français, mais rapport co-dirigé par un conseiller du président Obama, Richard Thaler, se targue ainsi de pouvoir littéralement « rentrer dans le cerveau du consommateur », grâce en particulier à l’imagerie cérébrale, pour orienter, influencer ses choix économiques… Cela ne fait que confirmer redoutablement l’essentiel de mon propos : l’idéologie comportementale et cognitive, qui considère que l’individu, réduit à un instrument de traitement de l’information, peut être conditionné dans ses choix par un ensemble de sanctions et de récompenses, la bonne vieille méthode de la carotte et du bâton, est devenue une idéologie d’État pour les gouvernements néolibéraux : à travers un ensemble de techniques de propagande, il leur est possible aujourd’hui non seulement de conformer le comportement de chacun aux normes du marché, mais surtout de favoriser leur intégration cognitive, pour en faire une loi naturelle, incontestable… Quiconque y déroge, dorénavant, peut être ainsi déclaré objectivement, scientifiquement, souffrant sinon malade, et relever d’un traitement psychologique, et médical.

Parler de ma place de psychiatre, praticien hospitalier de service public, pour décrire ces phénomènes est une position privilégiée, car l’évolution de la psychiatrie témoigne en première ligne de cette évolution de la doctrine néolibérale : la psychiatrie constitue un miroir grossissant de ce que le système de domination économique dans lequel nous vivons est en train de faire de la subjectivité de chacun d’entre nous. La psychiatrie n’a plus en effet pour rôle de soigner des maladies mentales, strictement définies par un ensemble de symptômes, mais s’occupe désormais officiellement de programmer la santé mentale des populations, santé mentale définie négativement, par l’absence de toute déviance comportementale vis à vis de la norme socio-économique. Un autre rapport, quasi-simultané, du Centre d’analyse stratégique gouvernemental, dirigé cette fois par une professeure d’épidémiologie formée à l’école comportementaliste et scientiste canadienne, Viviane Kovess, définit en effet la santé mentale, qui est « l’affaire de tous », comme « la capacité à s’adapter à une situation à laquelle on ne peut rien changer, (ou encore) l’aptitude à jouir de la vie ». Il s’agit là ni plus ni moins de la définition de l’individu libéral héritée d’Adam Smith, voire du marquis de Sade : la recherche égoïste et concurrentielle de l’intérêt individuel fait la richesse des nations et le bonheur collectif. Viviane Kovess est l’une des promotrices d’un programme européen de santé mentale visant à conditionner celle-ci par des logiciels d’apprentissage dès l’enfance. On voit que la psychiatrie est bel et bien devenue l’instrument d’une politique européenne et mondiale de santé, ou plutôt de conformité mentale, faisant d’ailleurs l’objet en France de plans quinquennaux, soutenus par la fondation d’État FondaMental. Cette dernière a pour mission de dépister tout trouble, toute défaillance individuelle le plus précocement possible, et de les corriger par la « psycho-éducation », car ils nuisent à la compétition économique, ainsi que l’affirmait son ancienne présidente, parlementaire UMP… La psychiatrie est donc aujourd’hui vraiment une affaire d’État : elle est instrumentalisée par le pouvoir néolibéral pour lui servir de caution scientiste à sa politique gestionnaire et répressive qui ne cesse de se durcir (comme le laisse à penser la continuité de la politique d’expulsion des étrangers en situation irrégulière depuis le changement présidentiel). Elle est devenue l’arme principale du contrôle socio-économique des comportements déviants, délinquants et même simplement défaillants. Comment diable en est on arrivés là ?

Survol de l’évolution historique de la psychiatrie

La psychiatrie est née avec les lumières et a grandi avec le scientisme positiviste : dès son origine, elle a constitué un système symbolique essentiel pour la civilisation occidentale (donnant une représentation acceptable de la folie et de la finitude, par le déplacement symbolique de la souffrance, de la violence sociale vers le psychisme individuel et la science médicale). Mais ce qui se passe aujourd’hui, c’est que ce système symbolique est devenu un système de propagande au service de l’ordre néolibéral : la métaphore psychologique et médicale permet de nier la violence que celui-ci exerce, de naturaliser la norme économique dans la subjectivité, de faire rentrer la loi du marché à l’intérieur de nos neurones sinon jusque dans nos gènes… La pression normative écrasante qui s’exerce aujourd’hui sur chacun d’entre nous et dans le monde entier est ainsi niée symboliquement, par psychiatrie interposée. Comment une telle mutation s’est-elle opérée, en deux siècles d’histoire ?

Passons rapidement sur les deux guerres mondiales : à leur décours, avec Freud puis Parsons, le système symbolique médico-psychologique se prend de plus en plus pour la réalité, l’adaptation psychologique devient la norme individuelle du progrès civilisationnel. Mais c’est surtout avec la chute du mur de Berlin que ce système de croyances acquiert la force d’une conviction absolue. Avec l’effondrement du bloc communiste vient le triomphe du néolibéralisme, et le début de la troisième guerre mondiale : le seul ennemi devient l’individu, à embrigader dans la guerre économique. Ce tournant se traduit par la mondialisation de l’idéologie comportementale : tout trouble est désormais une maladie mentale. Apparaissent en effet en cascade les classifications mondiales des troubles du comportement, et en France la loi sur l’hospitalisation d’office des troubles à l’ordre public, ainsi que la circulaire instaurant la politique de santé mentale. C’est aussi le début du contrôle informatique effréné des activités humaines.

Dix ans plus tard, surviennent les attentats du World Trade Center, simple incident de parcours dans cette fuite en avant hégémonique du système néolibéral : le terroriste se cache parmi nous, l’ennemi est intérieur. On assiste alors à une avalanche de lois sécuritaires (plus de trente en dix ans). Encore presque dix ans plus tard, 2008, voici la crise ultime des SubPrimes. La bulle n’est pas seulement spéculative mais psychologique, la dépression est tout autant nerveuse qu’économique : c’est la baudruche consumériste qui éclate, l’illusion de la possession matérielle pour tous qui s’effondre. Pour sauver le capitalisme, au moins temporairement, il n’y aura pas d’autre solution que de « changer les comportements et les mentalités », projet que le président Sarkozy annoncera à plusieurs reprises. Son discours de Toulon sera très rapidement suivi du discours d’Antony instrumentalisant un fait divers, le meurtre commis par un schizophrène malencontreusement échappé d’un hôpital psychiatrique, pour annoncer le grand tournant sécuritaire de la psychiatrie : celle-ci devra dorénavant garantir le risque zéro. Vous voyez qu’il existe un rapport dialectique étroit entre science psychiatrique et crise économique…

Tout malade est un criminel en puissance, et tout individu est un malade qui s’ignore, pour peu qu’il trouve à redire à l’ordre en place : moins de 3 ans plus tard, cette dérive sécuritaire se concrétise dans la loi du 5 juillet 2011, instaurant les « soins sans consentement ». On peut, on doit désormais surveiller et traiter de force tout trouble du comportement, par des « programmes de soins » à domicile. Voici comment la psychiatrie est devenue sans coup férir une arme de dissuasion massive de tout remise en cause individuelle dérangeante du système de domination néolibéral, permettant un déni symbolique de toute contrainte, de toute violence socio-économique.

État des lieux actuel de la psychiatrie : une triple dérive qui s’accélère

Dérive scientiste : c’est donc le triomphe de l’idéologie comportementale, qui diffuse la bonne santé mentale dans l’ensemble de la société, du sommet de l’État à la dernière des classes maternelles en passant par le monde de l’entreprise, à travers les procédures d’évaluation et échelles de comportement. Cette idéologie au pouvoir est renforcée par un véritable délire scientiste : la norme comportementale a une origine biologique, tout trouble doit avoir forcément une cause médicale, organique. C’est le sens des recherches faramineuses en neurosciences et sur la vulnérabilité génétique : tous les troubles, toutes les déviances sont concernés (hyperactivité, troubles des conduites, addictions, conduites suicidaires, troubles bipolaires et labiles…). Des intérêts colossaux sont en jeu, à la fois scientistes (congrès et publications de la psychiatrie universitaire, instituts de recherche privés comme FondaMental et publics avec l’Inserm), politiques (prises de positions gouvernementales, rapports du Centre d’analyse stratégique) et industriels (poids du lobbying pharmaceutique). On a parlé des recherches en neuro-économie, il faut citer également la classification internationale DSM-5 dont la parution est imminente, et qui décrit des troubles prédictifs : désormais, il faut dépister le trouble le plus précocement possible voire avant même qu’il arrive pour le tuer dans l’oeuf !

Dérive marchande : comme dans tous les services publics, ou ce qu’il en reste, c’est le triomphe de l’idéologie managériale cognitivo-comportementaliste de la rentabilité, de l’évaluation, de la qualité, réalisant une course incessante à la performance (sélection des meilleurs soignants au mérite, et culpabilisation, mise à l’écart des incapables), parallèlement à une pénurie croissante des moyens et à un contrôle administratif renforcé, et aboutissant à une perte de toute indépendance et de toute éthique professionnelle.

Dérive sécuritaire enfin, cachant une violence institutionnelle qui s’accroît : cinq lois et deux circulaires en cinq ans, psychiatrisant toujours plus la déviance et la délinquance, et accompagnant des pratiques « soignantes » de plus en plus coercitives. La mission de la psychiatrie devient l’expertise prédictive omnipotente de la dangerosité, parallèlement à la mise en place d’un fichage généralisé des populations à problèmes, qui coûtent trop cher, pour les trier voire les éliminer en douceur. Surtout, la loi du 5 juillet 2011 instaure une société de contrôle d’un genre nouveau, à travers les soins sans consentement à domicile, autrement dit le déni psychiatrique de toute contrainte extérieure pesant sur l’individu. On assiste là à l’abolition de tout libre-arbitre, de la possibilité de penser différemment, et finalement de la vie privée, par une loi qui dicte à toute la population le bon comportement individuel. Dorénavant, chacun devra se conformer de lui-même à des normes posées comme une réalité absolue, même si il n’y consent pas. C’est l’avènement d’un État policier où la psychiatrie exerce la police des comportements, le ministère de l’intérieur psychique, conditionnant une normopathie de masse, au sens de Hannah Arendt. L’implosion psychologique remplace toute possibilité d’explosion sociale, chacun est tenu d’être surveillé et traité médicalement chez soi et en soi pour être heureux… C’est l’avènement de l’hygiénisme du bonheur obligatoire, du repli programmé dans le confort de son cocon personnel, mais aseptisé, vidé de toute distance critique, de toute altérité.

La psychiatrie resituée dans l’évolution socio-économique : la propagande néolibérale

C’est la stratégie du choc psycho-économique dont parle Naomi Klein, autrement dit l’application systématique par le pouvoir des méthodes cognitivo-comportementales de soumission (on parlera de renforcement positif et négatif, ou en plus imagé de la carotte et du bâton).

La « carotte », c’est la propagande spectaculaire et marchande du divertissement, de la consommation, et la propagande techno-scientiste (mythe du progrès, de la croissance, de l’amélioration des performances…). Elle est portée par le marketing publicitaire, les industries culturelles, la télévision, les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC), les jeux vidéo : tous ces moyens reposent sur le culte de l’argent roi et le star système, la promesse du bonheur et de la possession ; ils agissent par hypnose, tendant un miroir narcissique dans lequel se reflète et se leurre toute la société. Ainsi se réalise une auto-excitation vers toujours plus, une fuite en avant incessante, un emballement, comme un tourbillon qui nous emporte irrésistiblement…

Le « bâton », c’est la politique de la peur de l’ennemi intérieur, du bouc émissaire : une police de plus en plus répressive (gardes à vue, délits d’outrage, manifestations piégées, affaire de Tarnac, politique migratoire, armes non létales…) ; une justice de plus en plus intrusive et prédictive (loi LOPPSI II, loi Estrosi, fichier Hortefeux PASP, FNAEG, délinquance routière = exemple de psychologisation cognitivo-comportementale généralisée, et redoutablement efficace, de la répression…) ; un dressage éducatif de plus en plus sévère (casse de l’école par la RGPP provoquant une sélection de plus en plus élitiste, politique de prévention de la délinquance, réforme de la justice des mineurs, fichage informatique des compétences…) ; une destruction sociale accélérée (précarisation généralisée, management par l’évaluation = modèle clef décidément de la psychologisation cognitivo-comportementale universelle de la soumission néolibérale, idéologie de la lutte contre la fraude, rôle de contrôle social et technologique des travailleurs médico-sociaux eux-mêmes menacés de sanctions automatiques) ; dissuasion psychiatrique visant comme on l’a vu à renforcer le moral des troupes ou du troupeau (psychiatrisation de toute défaillance étiquetée « dépression »). Tout cela a généré en quelques années seulement d’ordre néolibéral absolu incarné par la présidence sarkozienne, une société de suspicion et de surveillance généralisée (dans laquelle les TIC jouent un rôle majeur : fichiers de police, mouchardage électronique, vidéosurveillance, géolocalisation, biométrie, fichier centralisé des Cartes nationales d’identité…) et même d’auto-surveillance où la vie privée devient transparente (TIC encore avec les réseaux sociaux, plan vigipirate, voisins vigilants, matraquage permanent, à tous les coins de rue, du message « pour votre sécurité » = emblématique de l’intériorisation psychologique de toute contrainte, de toute violence socio-économique)…

Les conséquences de cette pression normative écrasante qui se dénie comme telle : la destruction de la subjectivité

C’est le conditionnement d’un conformisme, d’une normopathie de masse marquée par la duplicité. Il s’agit pour chacun d’entre nous, de faire semblant d’adhérer à des normes de plus en plus injustes et absurdes : l’alternative se pose dans l’ensemble du champ social entre se soumettre, se démettre, tomber malade, ou résister. Illustrations : Arendt (banalité du mal), psychosociologie (Asch), Foucault (nouvelle gouvernementalité biopolitique post-disciplinaire), critiques du management par l’évaluation, telle que celle de Dejours (peur de la précarisation : oeillères volontaires, cynisme viril). Mis à part déserter ou résister, on peut donc au choix :

• Tomber malade : c’est la dépression du burn out, qui touche les plus vulnérables, autrement dit les gens sincères et engagés. En témoignent également les épidémies récentes de suicides professionnels et de crimes de masse (Norvège, Toulouse, Denver = Batman en avant-première au cinéma : acte « fou » ? Pas tant que ça, car riche de sens en brisant le miroir spéculaire insupportable de la violence générée par « The American Way of Life »). Ainsi que les pathologies de la consommation (addictions) et de l’accélération (hyperactivité, labilité émotionnelle, troubles bipolaires…)
• Se soumettre : la perversion narcissique est aujourd’hui la personnalité culturelle, la néo-subjectivité malade du néolibéralisme (Lasch, Dejours, Dufour, Brown, Dardot et Laval…). C’est le conditionnement généralisé d’un narcissisme conformiste et consumériste de masse voué à la jouissance immédiate. Il traduit une fuite auto-excitatrice, comme une ivresse, dans la concurrence et le profit immédiat, c’est à dire un déni de la dépression, de la vulnérabilité, et sa projection dans un bouc émissaire. Cette instrumentalisation, cette chosification d’autrui est entièrement commandée par les nouveaux modes de contrôle social (politique de santé mentale opportuniste, idéologie comportementale conquérante, course à la performance, fichage informatique omniscient…). Passons sur les analyses sociologiques du sadisme inconscient : Habermas, Bourdieu, De Gauléjac, Prigent, Méheust (politique de l’oxymore = injonctions paradoxales, euphémisation de la violence) ; et sur les conséquences historiques redoutables de cette évolution : retour de l’eugénisme (trans-humanisme), accélération insensée du temps vers ce que Hartmut Rosa décrit comme « immobilité fulgurante ».

« Remèdes » : quelques pistes pour une alterpsychiatrie

Retrouver un mode de pouvoir non abusif, réellement démocratique : l’autorité est légitime quand elle est capable de se critiquer, quand elle est reconnue comme telle car non niée symboliquement (par psychiatrie, TIC, etc.). Le rétro-contrôle individuel doit être rendu possible dans le système sociopolitique (tirage au sort, référendum d’initiative populaire, justice indépendante, etc.).

Restaurer des limites épistémologiques strictes à la psychiatrie et au travail socio-éducatif, qui ne doivent plus s’occuper du contrôle techno-scientiste de toute déviance sociale. En particulier, promouvoir une alterpsychiatrie soucieuse de la subjectivité, des droits et des libertés individuels (la véritable santé se définit comme liberté, création de ses propres valeurs – cf. Campguilhem). Une véritable psychiatrie devrait se constituer comme médiation symbolique, capable de résister sans concession à la triple dérive actuelle, scientiste, marchande et sécuritaire.

Enfin respecter les limites éthiques de l’existence, ce qui demande un « travail » personnel et relationnel (« thérapie psycho-politique ») : accepter sa vulnérabilité, avec humilité (auto-limitation, castration symbolique, etc.), prôner la décélération voire la décroissance, revendiquer la franchise, condition de la confiance. Concrètement, il va falloir se résoudre à sortir vraiment du mythe de l’enrichissement et de la performance pour accéder à l’austérité conviviale (Ivan Illich) : c’est d’abord cela, la transition.

Sur un mode comparable, une autre politique éducative est possible…

Olivier Labouret

Source : Blogs d’Attac

La crisi del padre e l’indebolimento del matrimonio

La crisi del padre e l’indebolimento del matrimonio

di Claudio Risé

Fonte: Claudio Risè [scheda fonte]

L’estinzione dei padri è ormai nei nostri media un genere comico di successo. Non così altrove: «Dobbiamo fare di più per incoraggiare la paternità. Ciò che fa di te un uomo non è la capacità di generare un figlio. È il coraggio di crescerlo. Famiglie forti creano comunità forti». Quindi uno Stato forte. Chi l’ha detto? Benedetto XVI prima di dimettersi? Un conservatore impenitente?
Il presidente degli Stati Uniti, Obama, nel primo discorso sullo “Stato dell’Unione” dopo la rielezione.
Sono ora disponibili le prime reazioni della galassia di associazioni e istituzioni che si occupano negli USA di paternità, famiglia e educazione. Tutte piuttosto soddisfatte di come l’icona mondiale dell’opinione democratica abbia insistito sul ruolo centrale che il padre occupa in ogni strategia di rafforzamento dello Stato e ricordato come il suo indebolimento sia stato invece determinante nel rendere più fragile l’America.
Obama lo disse fin dall’inizio della sua presidenza, offrendo l’esperienza di un figlio cresciuto senza il padre, e tiene a ricordarlo agli americani. I quali d’altra parte lo sanno benissimo. Tanto da essersi ormai stufati di riderne nelle soap opera o reality televisivi, dove il tema del padre imbranato o inadempiente, dicono le ricerche di mercato, ha smesso da tempo di divertire. Anche perché, invece, preoccupa sempre più: il 91% dei padri e il 93 % delle madri pensano che la crisi della paternità sia grave ed abbia costi sociali ormai insopportabili (24 milioni di bambini crescono senza un padre).
La crisi delle coppie e delle famiglie indebolisce la classe media sulla quale riposa la forza degli Stati Uniti: questo pensa Obama, sulla base dei dati presentati dai diversi “Advisory Council” che raccolgono i dati sulla situazione economica e sociale cui si ispira la sua politica.
Il padre assente ha poi effetti devastanti sui gruppi più poveri, lasciati allo sbando dalla mancanza paterna.
La crisi del padre, pensa il democratico Obama, non nasce però da sola: è legata all’indebolimento del matrimonio. Insieme i due fenomeni mettono in pericolo il futuro e la prosperità del Paese.
Il benessere dei figli è infatti fortemente aiutato da rapporti tra i genitori forti e di buona qualità. Aiutare matrimoni sani e relazioni stabili, serve al benessere dei bambini e delle famiglie. E fa bene anche al bilancio dello Stato.
A guardare dentro le statistiche USA (pesce pilota dell’Occidente, che sempre indica dove si va se non si corregge la rotta), si scopre che l’assenza dei padri comincia presto.
Il 60% delle donne che partoriscono fra i 20 e i 24 anni non hanno un partner, nelle altre classi d’età le single sono il 40%. Nell’insieme un bambino su tre cresce in case senza padri (tra gli afroamericani, come Obama, i “senza padri” sono il 64%).
Uno Stato che non si limita alla chiacchiere, ma come gli Usa fa i conti dei propri disastri, scopre a quel punto di aver bisogno del padre: partner insostituibile non solo per le madri, ma anche per lo Stato, per la continuazione della vita sociale.
Le statistiche e i rapporti su cui si basano i discorsi di Obama mostrano che le famiglie in cui mancano i padri sono più povere. I bambini in condizione di povertà solo il 7.8% nelle coppie sposate, mentre salgono al 38% con le madri singole.
L’assenza del padre è poi un fattore di rischio rilevante in tutti gli altri problemi: dall’uso di droghe ai guai con la giustizia, ai problemi di salute, o di relazione.
Sembra proprio che il padre non sia una “costruzione culturale”, come si ripete spesso in Europa, ma una necessità dell’esistenza.

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

La fiducia riparte da noi

Claudio RISE:

La fiducia riparte da noi

Ex: http://claudiorise.wordpress.com/

Claudio Risé, da “Il Mattino di Napoli” del lunedì, 1 ottobre 2012, www.ilmattino.it

La patologia più diffusa oggi? La sfiducia. E non è solo il frutto degli ultimi scandali, o della crisi. E’ qualcosa di sotterraneo, che si sta sviluppando lentamente, da anni, non solo in Italia. Sfiducia verso le autorità, lo Stato, i superiori. Ma anche verso i genitori, i figli. E, soprattutto, se stessi.

La corruzione è legata, nel profondo, anche a questo. Facciamo molta fatica a pensarci onesti. Sarà ben difficile diventarlo finché vediamo in questo modo noi stessi e gli altri.

Questa sfiducia porta con sé il pessimismo: se non mi fido di nessuno, la vita diventa più difficile. Ed alimenta la paura, lo stato emotivo in cui crescono ansia, e instabilità.

All’origine di siffatto scenario, che rende difficile superare le crisi e risanare persone e nazioni c’è un sentimento preciso: la sfiducia.

Sul perché sia diffuso oggi, le versioni sono molteplici. Una buona parte della psicoanalisi, soprattutto dagli anni 30 del Novecento in poi, ha messo sotto osservazione il rapporto del bimbo con la madre, dato che lì si sviluppa la fiducia (o sfiducia) verso gli altri, e il mondo. I cambiamenti nella famiglia, l’aspirazione femminile al lavoro, il trasferimento dalle campagne alle città, e molto altro, avrebbero reso meno accoglienti e più insicure le madri, e istillato questa fondamentale sfiducia nei figli.
Molti sogni di caduta, anche ripetuti da grandi, sarebbero legati alla fantasia (spesso riconosciuta da madri e padri) di lasciar cadere il figlioletto che hanno in braccio, inconsciamente percepita dai figli come pericolo.

Naturalmente, ciò non basta a spiegare la crescita della sfiducia, e delle diverse paure che questo non fidarsi alimenta.

Anche il crescente moltiplicarsi di contratti, di obblighi e diritti giuridicamente tutelati verso gli altri, paradossalmente aumenta l’insicurezza e la sfiducia. I genitori adempiranno gli standard correnti, illustrati dai media, o devo farli “richiamare” ai loro doveri da assistenti sociali, psicologi, magistrati, giornalisti?

Queste nuove possibilità, che sono in effetti anche protezioni, rendono però fragile fin dall’infanzia un rapporto di fiducia di cui lo sviluppo della personalità ha d’altra parte assoluta necessità.
Lo stesso accade per le innumerevoli altre tutele: sindacali, sanitarie, professionali, amministrative, affettive.

L’altro sarà davvero “in ordine”? O ci saranno in giro batteri, irregolarità, secondi fini?
Queste domande ci spingono ad uno stato psicologico molto vicino al disturbo paranoico, che nelle società di massa diventa sospetto generalizzato e infezione psichica collettiva. Tanto più pericolosa quanto più queste società apparentemente permissive e tolleranti non sviluppano nei propri membri senso critico e autocensure, ma autorizzano a trasferire sugli altri timori e inadeguatezze che percepiamo presenti già in noi stessi.

La mancanza di fiducia si rivela così essere la buccia di banana su cui sta pericolosamente scivolando la nostra società ex opulenta (come racconta tra gli altri la filosofa Michela Marzano che ha dedicato al tema il suo ultimo saggio: Avere fiducia).

Inutile, anzi controproducente, si rivela l’icona pubblicitaria della “trasparenza”. L’uomo, in quanto dotato di spessore e contenuti, non può essere trasparente. Deve, anzi, imparare a riconoscerli e difenderli dalle invasioni massmediatiche. Quando poi necessario ed utile a sé e agli altri, deve però impegnarsi nel cambiamento, senza aspettare di esservi richiamato dall’Autorità. Potrà così sviluppare una più tranquilla fiducia in se stesso. Base indispensabile per aver fiducia negli altri.

The Origins of Manliness

By F. Roger Devlin

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

The Way of Men

by Jack Donovan

Milwaukee, OR: Dissonant Hum, 2012

Manliness rated high on ancient lists of the virtues; indeed, for the Romans, virtus designated both the general concept of virtue and manliness in particular. Today, as author Jack Donovan remarks, if manliness gets mentioned at all, it is usually made a vehicle for selling us on something else: “real men love Jesus” or “a real man would never hit a woman.”

How might we arrive at an objective understanding of manliness? The Way of Men looks to Homo sapiens’ environment of evolutionary adaptation, viz. life in small hunter-gatherer bands struggling for survival both with nature and with other similar bands. Civilization has not lasted long enough yet for us to become fully adapted to it.

The state of nature is not a world of individuals, as the early philosophers of liberalism imagined, but of cooperation in small groups or bands. The first aim of such cooperation is to establish and maintain possession of a territory for your band. Then you must guard the perimeter and acquire the means of sustenance—either by killing animals in the wild or by successfully raiding other bands.

Manliness, in the first instance, consists of whatever traits make for success at these tasks. Donovan calls them “tactical virtues,” and lists them as strength, courage, mastery, and honor. Strength and courage are more or less self-explanatory; mastery refers to competence in whatever skills are useful to one’s band: building, setting traps, making blades or arrows, and so on.

Honor in its most basic sense means “the primitive desire to hit back when hit, to show that you will stand up for yourself.” In a lawless situation, a man’s life may depend on his ability to make others afraid to harm or even show contempt for him, i.e., on avoiding any appearance of weakness or submissiveness. This raw form of honor can still be observed in prisons or amid Sicily’s onorevole società—i.e., among men who respect only force. With civilization, young men learn to honor their elders in spite of being physically able to beat them up. Gradually honor may come to be associated with such intangibles as knowledge or moral authority, but it never entirely escapes its origin in violence.

Donovan believes that the human male’s environment of evolutionary adaptation explains the modern man’s visceral disgust at flamboyant effeminacy in other men, something which several decades of homosexualist propaganda have not been able to alter. The explanation is that in a lawless situation, a man who rejects the male honor code brings shame upon his group and thereby weakens it. A man might rationalize this aversion or disgust by appealing, e.g., to the biblical condemnation of homosexuality, but his behavior has a much more visceral origin.

The author insists on the distinction between manliness and moral “goodness” in general:

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, the King promises his enemies that unless they surrendered, his men would rape their shrieking daughters, dash the heads of their old men, and impale their naked babies on pikes. [Yet] I can’t call Henry an unmanly character with a straight face.

Hollywood is also well aware of men’s abiding fascination with amoral “tough guys.”

As civilization develops, combat is replaced by the safer, ritualized combat of athletic contests. Many men come to experience masculinity vicariously, for the most part. An increasing number turn their masculine instincts inward, and focus on “self-mastery, impulse control, disciplined behavior and perseverance.” Raw masculinity is tempered into manliness and assigned a place beside justice, temperance and other virtues not specific to the male sex.

It is hard to deny that much of this represents a gain: the Victorian gentleman is surely an improvement over the Paleolithic hunter, not to mention MS-13. But something of masculinity does get sacrificed along the way, and the transition is difficult for many men to make. Donovan cites the Epic of Gilgamesh, composed back in the days when urban life was something new: “Here in the city man dies oppressed at heart, man perishes with despair in his heart.” Another character complains of growing weak and being oppressed by idleness.

As Cochran and Harpending have shown (see The Ten Thousand Year Explosion, pp. 65ff), human beings have adapted to settled civilization to some degree in the ages since Gilgamesh—but few have adapted enough to feel at their ease amid the unprecedented effeminacy of the present age.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, only a few people will do anything worth doing. For most of us there will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission, more examinations, more certifications, background checks, video safety presentations, counseling and sensitivity training.

In short, we are becoming the society William James predicted “of clerks and teachers, of co-education and zoophily, of consumers’ leagues and associated charities, of industrialism unlimited and feminism unabashed.”

In one of the most interesting sections of his book, Donovan discusses two species of great ape: the Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. These were formerly considered varieties of a single species: they look very similar, are interfertile, and their territories are contiguous. Yet closer examination revealed that they differ radically in their behavior.

The gist of the difference is that Chimp society is organized along male lines while Bonobos behave like proto-feminists. Male Chimps form alliances, females don’t. Among Bonobos, it is females that maintain social networks, while males don’t. Male Chimps batter their mates; male Bonobos don’t. Female Chimps acknowledge male dominance; female Bonobos don’t. Male Chimps patrol the border of their territory and make raids on other groups; male Bonobos do neither.

What causes these differences? It turns out that Chimps must hunt to survive; Gorillas and other rivals take most of the vegetable nourishment in their territory. Bonobos have no such rivals, so they simply live off the abundant vegetable food available to them. Female Bonobos can provide for themselves, so males are less valuable to them and less respected by them. While Chimps mate to produce offspring, Bonobos are “sexually liberated,” mating for pleasure and socialization. (The female great ape is no more “naturally monogamous” than the female human.) Homosexual behavior is also common among them.

In short, the “Bonobo masturbation society,” as Donovan terms it, is the natural end-product of feminism, which is a natural response to a long run of abundance and safety. A lot of effort is being put into selling men on a vision of the future as more of what we have today: more food and drink, more security, more labor-saving devices, more vicarious sex, more vicarious masculinity, more real effeminacy.

The Way of Men closes with some recommendations for men who are not thrilled by this prospect. The author believes that the future mapped out for us is “based on unsustainable illusions and lies about human nature.” It is already falling, and only needs a push. Men will not be able to challenge the system directly, but they can encourage fission around the edges. As central authority loses the loyalty of an increasing number of men, we are likely to witness a kind of social atavism, as men begin forming small groups—gangs, in fact—to protect their interests. Eventually nature will triumph, as it always does, and men will “follow their own way into a future that belongs to men.”

I miti che generano depressione

I miti che generano depressione

di Claudio Risé

Fonte: Claudio Risè [scheda fonte]

Un europeo su dieci è depresso. Le donne il doppio degli uomini, e i giovani più degli adulti. Lo rivela l’ultimo sondaggio importante svolto in Italia, Francia, Inghilterra, Spagna e Germania, che conferma i dati precedenti. Sappiamo così che non aumenta. Ma cosa succede quando si entra in depressione, e perché accade?
Alcuni aspetti diventano sempre più evidenti: ad esempio i tratti “sociali” della depressione, i suoi legami col lavoro, la famiglia, e il modello di sviluppo attuale.
I depressi vengono messi in difficoltà dal carattere “performativo” del nostro modello sociale che richiede in continuazione di “funzionare” bene nei diversi campi, dal lavoro alla sessualità.
Ridurre la persona a produttore (di denaro, successo, piacere), suscita in molti l’ansia di “misurare” direttamente quanto siano adeguati alle richieste degli altri e del collettivo. A questo punto, se non si è sostenuti da una forte autostima, e da molta concretezza e umiltà, è facile deprimersi.
Il modello della “persona di successo” è, infatti, per definizione, ideale e irraggiungibile, come dimostrano le stesse biografie delle star, che rivelano in continuazione improvvisi squarci di infelicità, disordine, o vere e proprie malattie.
La bellezza, l’essere attraenti, è una dote di partenza, non è completamente costruibile con la chirurgia o altri artifici: dà più sicurezza apprezzarsi per come si è che inseguire una perfezione inesistente.
L’altro grande Idolo del nostro modello culturale poi, il potere, richiede a sua volta (per solito) grandi durezze e sacrifici per ottenerlo, (magari sul piano della coerenza, gusti, o moralità personali), e prima o poi va necessariamente lasciato, o comunque viene tolto.
Adeguarsi a queste richieste collettive: performance elevate, bellezza, potere, suscita dunque di per sé prima ansia, e poi depressione. Si diventa come bambini piccoli e esageratamente prepotenti, che su una giostra vogliano raggiungere il cavallo di legno che c’è davanti invece di godersi il loro giro. E quando il giro è finito piangono.
Da questo punto di vista la depressione, se attraversata con consapevolezza, può invece essere un importante passaggio formativo e una straordinaria scuola di vita, come ha ricordato nei suoi lavori (tra cui l’ultimo: Elogio della depressione) Eugenio Borgna, che ha introdotto in Italia la psichiatria fenomenologica.
Certamente non è facile, come del resto buona parte delle esperienze formative dell’esistenza.
Il rifiutare questo “lato difficile” della formazione personale, e il cercare di aggirarlo con tecniche, o con vere e proprie menzogne, come la “vendita del successo” in cui consiste molta pseudo educazione contemporanea, non fa altro che produrre nuove depressioni e altri disagi. Tra questi, è piuttosto interessante l’attuale svalutazione mediatica e culturale dell’importanza nella vita delle persone di un rapporto di coppia stabile.
Del consumismo complessivo e della relativa esaltazione dell’individuo, col suo fascino e potere, fa parte infatti la celebrazione della fine della famiglia-coppia stabile, sostituita da famiglie aperte e variabili, inframmezzate da lunghi periodi di stato “single”. Peccato però che proprio le persone che vivono da sole, single, divorziati, separati o vedovi siano nel gruppo di testa dei depressi (in Europa e nel mondo).
Lo stabile e profondo rapporto d’amore con l’altro, così come la ricca e complessa socialità della famiglia, col suo dialogo tra generazioni e società circostante, sostiene infatti, oggi e da sempre, la formazione e sviluppo della persona. E quindi il suo benessere.

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

Freud's Follies: Psychoanalysis as a Religion, Cult, and Political Movement

Freud's Follies: Psychoanalysis as a Religion, Cult, and Political Movement

Kevin MacDonald

Ex: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/

We begin to grasp that the deviser of psychoanalysis was at bottom a visionary but endlessly calculating artist, engaged in casting himself as the hero of a multivolume fictional opus that is part epic, part detective story, and part satire on human self-interestedess and animality. This scientifically deflating realization . . . is what the Freudian community needs to challenge if it can. (Frederick Crews, The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute, pp. 12-13)

Since its inception, psychoanalysis has been denounced as a pseudoscience. By the early 1960's philosophers of science such as Michael Polanyi, Karl Popper, Ernst Nagel and Sidney Hook had noted the self-authenticating nature of psychoanalytic assertions. More recently, highly critical accounts of psychoanalysis from Henri Ellenberger (1970), Frank Sulloway (1992/1979), Adolph Grünbaum (1984), Frank Cioffi (1969, 1970, 1972), and, most recently, Malcolm Macmillan (1991) have appeared.

These critiques have been entirely irrelevant to the perpetuation of psychoanalysis as an intellectual movement. That in itself says a great deal, and we will have to investigate why this might be so.

The good news is that there are signs that psychoanalysis may finally be on the ropes, pummeled most effectively by the work of Frederick Crews. Crews published three book review essays in the prestigious New York Review of Books (NYRB) on recent revisionist scholarship on psychoanalysis and the recovered memory movement. Predictably, the Crews' articles provoked an impassioned response'one of the largest in NYRB history'from the psychoanalytic and recovered memory establishments. Fortunately, the NYRB has published almost the entire exchange in book form under the title The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (Crews et al, 1995).

One tip off to the pseudoscientific nature of psychoanalysis is to describe its institutional structure. In a real science there are no central organizations that function to ensure doctrinal conformity, expel those who deviate from the accepted truth, and present a united front to the world. It has long been apparent to observers, however, that this is exactly what psychoanalysis has done and continues to do. As Crews notes, psychoanalysis 'conducted itself less like a scientific-medical enterprise than like a politburo bent upon snuffing out deviationism' (Crews, 1995, p. 110). Perhaps the first person to notice and be repelled by this aspect of psychoanalysis was the famous Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler. Bleuler briefly flirted with psychoanalysis. But when he left the psychoanalytic movement in 1911, he said to Freud 'this 'who is not for us is against us,' this 'all or nothing,' is necessary for religious communities and useful for political parties. I can therefore understand the principle as such, but for science I consider it harmful.' (in Gay 1987, pp. 144-145). The quotation is telling. To become a psychoanalyst was like joining a religious or political movement and not at all like becoming a scientist.

The apex of the authoritarian, anti-scientific institutional structure of psychoanalysis was the Secret Committee of hand-picked loyalists sworn to uphold psychoanalytic orthodoxy, described by Phyllis Grosskurth in The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis: By insisting the Committee must be absolutely secret, Freud enshrined the principle of confidentiality.

The various psychoanalytic societies that emerged from the Committee were like Communist cells, in which the members vowed eternal obedience to their leader. Psychoanalysis became institutionalized by the founding of journals and the training of candidates; in short an extraordinarily effective political entity. (Grosskurth 1991, p. 15)

There were repeated admonitions for the Committee to present a 'united front' against all opposition, for 'maintaining control over the whole organization', for 'keeping the troops in line' and 'reporting to the commander' (Grosskurth 1991, p. 97). Consider Otto Rank's astonishing letter of 1924 in which he attributes his heretical behavior in questioning the Oedipal complex to his own neurotic unconscious conflicts, promises to see things 'more objectively after the removal of my affective resistance,' and is thankful that Freud 'found my explanations satisfactory and has forgiven me personally' (Grosskurth 1991, p. 166). Grosskurth notes how 'Freud seems to have acted as the Grand Inquisitor, and Rank's groveling 'confession' could have served as a model for the Russian show trials of the 1930's' (Grosskurth 1991, p. 167). Freud viewed the entire episode as a success; Rank had been cured of his neurosis 'just as if he had gone through a proper analysis' (quoted in Grosskurth 1991, p. 168).

The staunch Freud disciple, Fritz Wittels (1924) decried the 'suppression of free criticism within the Society.... Freud is treated as a demigod, or even as a god. No criticism of his utterances is permitted.' He tells us that Freud's Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie is 'the psychoanalyst's Bible. This is no mere figure of speech. The faithful disciples regard one another's books as of no account. They recognize no authority but Freud's; they rarely read or quote one another. When they quote it is from the Master, that they may give the pure milk of the word' (p. 142-143). Freud 'had little desire that [his] associates should be persons of strong individuality, and that they should be critical and ambitious collaborators. The realm of psychoanalysis was his idea and his will, and he welcomed anyone who accepted his views' (p. 134). The others were simply expelled.

All of the major figures around Freud appear to have been extremely submissive personalities who absolutely revered Freud as father figure. Indeed, the members appear to have self-consciously viewed themselves as loyal sons to Freud the father-figure (complete with sibling rivalry as the 'brothers' jockeyed for position as the 'father's' favorite), while Freud viewed his close followers as his children, with power to interfere in their personal lives (Grosskurth 1991, p. 123; see also Hale 1995, p. 29).

Ernest Jones, Freud's worshipful biographer and the official head of the movement after the expulsion of Jung, 'grasped the fact that to be a friend of Freud's meant being a sycophant. It meant opening oneself completely to him, to be willing to pour out all one's confidences to him' (Grosskurth 1991, 48). Masson (1990, 152) suggests that 'Jones believed that to disagree with Freud (the father) was tantamount to patricide (father murder).' When S��ndor Ferenczi, a central figure in the inner circle of psychoanalysis during the 1920's, disagreed with Freud on the reality of childhood sexual abuse, Jones called him a 'homicidal maniac' (p. 152).

Regarding Ferenczi, Grosskurth (1991) notes that '(t)he thought of a disagreement with Freud was unbearable ...' (p. 141); 'There were occasions when he rebelled against his dependency, but always he returned repentant and submissive' (pp. 54-55). Similarly, Masson (1990) describes Kurt Eissler, the closest confidant of Anna Freud's inner circle in the 1960's, by saying that 'What he felt for Freud seemed to border on worship' (p. 121). '(H)e held one thing sacred, and hence beyond criticism: Freud' (p. 122). It was common among the disciples to imitate Freud's personal mannerisms, and even among analysts who did not know Freud personally, there were 'intense feelings, fantasies, transferences, identifications' (Hale 1995, 30).

Evidence for the essentially cult-like nature of psychoanalysis is the unique role of disciples who are able to trace themselves back to Freud in a direct line of descent. 'The idea of being a chosen disciple, privileged to have direct contact with the master, has survived and is continued in the procedures of many of the training programs of the institutes' (Arlow & Brenner 1990, 5; see also Masson 1990, 55, 123). 'The intensely filial relationships to Freud of the first generation were gradually replaced by a highly emotional relationship to a fantasied Freud, still the primal founder, but also to organizations, to peers, to superiors in the institute hierarchy'above all'to the training analyst, the training analyst's analyst, and, if possible, back to Freud and his circle became a determinant of psychoanalytic prestige' (Hale 1995, 32).

Unlike a real science, there is a continuing role for Freud's writings as what one might term the sacred texts of the movement, both in teaching and in the current psychoanalytic literature. Arlow and Brenner (1988) note that Studies of Hysteria and The Interpretation of Dreams are almost 100 years old, but continue to be standard texts in psychoanalytic training programs. They also describe 'the recurrent appearance in the analytic literature of articles redoing, extending, deepening, and modifying Freud's early case histories' (p. 5). Indeed, it is remarkable just to simply scan psychoanalytic journal articles and find how many references there are to Freud's work which was written well over 60 years ago. In examining 6 issues of Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 1988-1989, I found 92 references to Freud in 33 articles. Only 4 articles had no references to Freud, and of these, one had no references at all and one had only one reference. As Wittels (1924, 143) noted early on: 'The faithful disciples regard one another's books as of no account. They recognize no authority but Freud's; they rarely read or quote one another. When they quote it is from the Master, that they may give the pure milk of the word.'

The continued use of Freud's texts in instruction and the continuing references to Freud's work would not be conceivable in a real science. While Darwin is venerated for his scientific work as the founder of the modern science of evolutionary biology, studies in evolutionary biology only infrequently refer to his writings because the field has moved so far beyond his work. The Origins of Species and The Descent of Man are important texts in the history of science, but are not used for current instruction. Moreover, central features of Darwin's account, such as his views on inheritance, have been completely rejected by modern workers. With Freud, however, there is continuing slavish loyalty to the master, at least within an important subset of the movement.

Besides Rank, other deviators, Fleiss, Adler, Jung, and Ferenczi, were diagnosed as suffering from a variety of psychiatric disorders and therefore needing further psychoanalysis to bring them back to the true faith. Freud 'never tired of repeating the now notorious contention that the opposition to psychoanalysis stemmed from 'resistances'' arising from emotional sources (Esterson 1993, 216). He attributed Jung's defection to 'strong neurotic and egotistic motives' (quoted in Gay 1988, 481). Even Peter Gay, the psychoanalytic loyalist and historian of the movement, writes that 'These ventures into character assassination are instances of the kind of aggressive analysis that psychoanalysts, Freud in the vanguard, at once deplored and practiced. This ... was the way that analysts thought about others, and about themselves.' The practice was 'endemic among analysts, a common professional deformation' (1988, p. 481).

This practice continues to this day. A common thread of the letters sent by the many aggrieved psychoanalysts in response to Crews' articles was that they were 'composed in a state of bitter anger by a malcontent with a vicious disposition' (Crews, 1995, p. 293). Crews' Freud bashing was typically explained in terms of botched transferences and Oedipal complexes gone awry. Another recent case is that of Jeffrey Masson (see Masson 1990) who suffered similar questionings of his sanity for challenging the central Freudian dogma of the Oedipal complex.

None of this is new to people even marginally acquainted with the scholarship on psychoanalysis. But it bears repeating because psychoanalysis, unlike a scientific theory but very much like certain religious or political movements, has essentially been immune from attacks leveled at it either from inside or outside the movement. Insiders who dissented from central doctrines were simply expelled and often went on to found their own psychoanalytically-oriented sects, typically with the same disregard for canons of scientific method as the parent religion. There is a long line of such expelled dissenters in the history of psychoanalysis, and the list continues to lengthen with the recent expulsion of Jeffrey Masson. Moreover, the central core of loyalists that has always existed in psychoanalysis functions to preserve the image of Freud as a heroic scientist to the point that many of Freud's papers have been locked away from the prying eyes of scholars for periods extending as far ahead as the 22nd Century.

The entire enterprise begins to appear more and more like an authoritarian religious cult than a scientific movement. Indeed, several authors have pointed out that psychoanalysis has many features in common with brainwashing (Bailey 1960, 1965; Salter 1996). Frank Sulloway (1979b) describes the indoctrination characteristic of training analyses in which any objection by the analysand is viewed as a resistance to be overcome. And even Shelly Orgel (1990), who remains a defender of the psychoanalytic faith, writes of the feelings of many contemporary analysands that their analysts had behaved aggressively toward them, turning them into devoted and passive followers of their highly idealized analyst, a role that was facilitated by the 'unquestioned authority' (p. 14) of the analyst.

Jeffrey Masson (1990) provides fascinating insight into psychoanalysis as thought control and aggression. Masson's training analysis involved a completely one-sided relationship in which the analyst had all of the power and in which the trainee was expected to put up with any and all indignities. Leaving the training analyst would have meant giving up psychoanalysis because the training analyst would claim that the trainee was unfit for a career as a psychoanalyst. The result of the analysis was an idealization of the training analyst and expressions of fealty regarding the worth of the training analyst's writings. Masson was more or less blackmailed into agreeing to include his own training analyst's name on a paper he was writing or be forced to re-enter analysis (pp. 83-83). Masson comments that 'Being in such an analysis is like growing up with a despotic parent' (p. 86), since the qualities it requires in the prospective analysts are meekness and abject obedience.

I suggest that the inculcation of passive and devoted followers via the aggression and thought control represented by psychoanalysis has always been an important aspect of the entire project. At a deep level, the fundamentally pseudoscientific structure of psychoanalysis implies that disputes cannot be resolved in a scientific manner, with the result that, as John Kerr (1992) notes, the only means of resolving disputes involves the exercise of personal power. The result was that the movement was doomed to develop into a mainstream orthodoxy punctuated by numerous sectarian deviations originated by individuals expelled from the orthodox movement. These heretical offshoots then replicated the fundamentally irrational pseudoscientific structure of the original. '(E)ach major disagreement over theory or therapy seemed to require a new validating social group, a psychoanalytic tradition that recent splits within Freudian institutes seem only to confirm' (Hale 1995, 26). Perhaps the most bizarre such offshoot was the movement initiated by Wilhelm Reich's, well-covered in Joel Carlinsky's Skeptic (Vol. 2, No. 3) article 'Epigones of Orgonomy.'

All of this is well-known, but there are several aspects of the recent controversy that are new. First, recent scholarship on psychoanalysis shows not only that psychoanalysis was never more than a pseudoscience but that Freud engaged in scientific fraud from the get-go in developing his theories. Allen Esterson's (1992) Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud demonstrates convincingly that Freud's patients did not volunteer any information on seduction or primal scenes at all. The seduction stories that provide the proffered empirical basis of the Oedipal complex were in fact a construction by Freud who then interpreted his patients' distress on hearing his constructions as confirmation. Freud then deceptively obscured the fact that his patients' stories were reconstructions and interpretations based on his a priori theory. He also retroactively changed the identity of the fancied seducers from non-family members (servants, etc.) when his Oedipal story required fathers instead.

Esterson provides numerous other examples of deception (and self-deception) and notes that they were typically couched in Freud's brilliant and highly convincing rhetorical style. And because of the reconstructive, interpretive manner of theory construction, the authority of the psychoanalyst became the only criterion of the truth of psychoanalytic claims. The movement, in order to be successful, would have to be, of necessity, highly authoritarian'a point brought out most forcefully in John Kerr's (1992) A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein. The movement was authoritarian from the beginning and has remained so throughout its history.

Now 100 years after its inception, the theory of the Oedipal complex, childhood sexuality, and the sexual etiology of the neuroses remain without any independent empirical validation and play no role whatever in mainstream developmental psychology. From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that children would have a specifically sexual attraction to their opposite sex parent is extremely implausible, since such an incestuous relationship would result in inbreeding depression (see MacDonald 1986). The proposal that boys desire to kill their fathers conflicts with the general importance of paternal provisioning of resources in understanding the evolution of the family (MacDonald, 1988; 1992a,b): Boys who had succeeded in killing their fathers and having sex with their mothers would not only be left with genetically inferior offspring, they would also be deprived of paternal support and protection. Modern developmental studies indicate that many fathers and sons have very close, reciprocated affectional relationships beginning in infancy, and the normative pattern in Western societies is for mothers and sons to have very intimate and affectionate, but decidedly non-sexual relationships. Most violence occurs with adoptive relatives (Daly & Wilson, 1981).

The continued life of these concepts in psychoanalytic circles is testimony to the continuing unscientific nature of the entire enterprise. Indeed, Kurzweil (1989, 89) notes that 'In the beginning, the Freudians tried to 'prove' the universality of the Oedipus complex; later on, they took it for granted. Ultimately, they no longer spelled out the reasons for the pervasiveness of childhood sexuality and its consequences in the cultural monographs: they all accepted it.' What started out as a speculation in need of empirical support ended up as a fundamental a priori assumption.

Another trend in recent scholarship is the increasing attention paid to the ethical dimensions of psychoanalysis as Freud actually practiced it. Freud seems to have been remarkably indifferent to his patient's suffering, but his ethical lapses extend far beyond a lack of empathy. Crews recounts the case of Horace Frink, an American psychoanalyst who was having an affair with a bank heiress. Freud diagnosed Frink as a latent homosexual (!) and advised him to divorce his wife and marry the heiress, with the stated aim of tapping into the heiress' funds for a financial contribution to psychoanalysis. To make the plan work, the heiress had to divorce her husband as well. All of this came about, but the two abandoned spouses were devastated and soon died, Frink's new wife sued for divorce, and Frink himself sank into depression and repeated attempts at suicide.

And then there is the case of Dora Bauer. In what could pass as a story line on a daytime soap opera, Freud diagnosed the teen-aged Dora as suffering from hysteria for refusing to have a sexual relationship with a married man, Herr K., as a sort of quid pro quo so that her father could continue to have an affair with Herr K.'s wife. Crews comments that 'In short, a sexually and morally uninhibited [Dora] rounded into psychic trim by Freud, would have been of service to both her father and Herr K., the two predatory males who, unlike any of the women in the story, basked in the glow of Freud's unwavering respect' (Crews, 1995, p. 52). The Dora case is typical also in that the patient's diagnosis was based entirely on preconceived ideas and circular reasoning in which the patient's negative emotional response to the psychoanalytic hypothesis was construed as evidence for the hypothesis.

A third aspect of recent scholarship focuses on the very pernicious effect psychoanalysis has had on psychotherapeutic practice, particularly the phenomenon of the Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT). Crews terms RMT the stepchild of psychoanalysis. At the time when the articles originally appeared in the NYRB, Crews was content to claim only a genealogical relationship between psychoanalysis and RMT. He now documents a much closer relationship between the two movements. A significant number of psychoanalysts are now rejecting the orthodox psychoanalytic theory that claims of infantile sexual abuse are illusory manifestations of Oedipal desires. These renegade psychoanalysts are now in fact adopting Freud's earlier seduction theory of 1896 in which neurosis was conceptualized as the result of actual sexual abuse. Crews notes, Freud developed this theory in the same manner as he did the Oedipal story that replaced it: by making suggestions to patients and doggedly persisting in his explanation until the patient acknowledged the 'truth' of the psychoanalytic explanation. Crews emphasizes that there is no end to the possible harmful social and moral influences of such a theory in the hands of its pseudoscientific practitioners, including bankruptcy, breaking up of families, and imprisonment of family members, all of which have been well described in John Hochman's Skeptic article (Vol. 2, #3).

Because of its belief in the reality of memories of childhood sexual abuse, the RMT movement must be viewed as a psychoanalytic heresy. As with all of the previous psychoanalytic heresies, however, RMT shares a commitment to a methodology that results in self-validation of theoretical claims. Unverifiable phenomena have been at the very center of psychoanalysis and its intellectual offspring from the beginning. The following quotation from Freud is an exemplar of the type of attitude that carries over into the RMT movement:

The work keeps on coming to a stop and they keep on maintaining that this time nothing has occurred to them. We must not believe what they say, we must always assume, and tell them, too, that they have kept something back.... We must insist on this, we must repeat the pressure and represent ourselves as infallible, till at last we are really told something.... There are cases too in which the patient tries to disown [the memory] even after its return. 'Something has occurred to me now, but you obviously put it into my head.' ... In all such cases, I remain unshakably firm. I ... explain to the patient that [these distinctions] are only forms of his resistance and pretexts raised by it against reproducing this particular memory, which we must recognize in spite of all this. (SE, 2:279-280; in Crews, p. 209)

Recently the RMT movement has coalesced around the assertion that sexually abused subjects experience a dissociation'a withdrawal of the victim's sense of self from the scene of the trauma. As Crews points out, dissociation is the perfect psychoanalytic-style vehicle for creation of a pseudoscience, since there is no way to disprove its existence and recovered memories never need be tested by comparing them with conscious memories. After all, if children dissociate themselves from the experience, one could not expect them to have any memories of the event.

As a result, the therapist may suppose that the patient had experienced sexual trauma even without any external evidence or memory of the event. Recovered Memory Therapists, in the words of one such practitioner, 'must validate the patient's belief that abuse occurred, or risk reenacting the role of denying parent, which may have enabled the abuse in the first place' (Crews, p. 25n21). The technique ensures validation and indeed finds a moral rationale for insisting on validation. But it cannot provide even the beginnings of a search for truth.

Several spectacular case studies illustrate the pathetic consequences of this pseudoscientific technique. That of Eileen Franklin Lipsker is particularly fascinating because Lipsker has more recently 'remembered' several other crimes that could not have possibly occurred. Crews shows that even before this turn of events Lipsker had developed increasingly bizarre 'memories' about her father, including a murder that no one else, including the police, had heard about and a supposed rape by Eileen's godfather that was aided by the father. The 'memories' were gradually elaborated as a result of the suggestions of a psychotherapist and their veracity attested to by Lenore Terr, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco. Terr used the aura of science surrounding her academic affiliation to convince the jury that that an expert like herself could distinguish authentic from non-authentic repressed memories.

Then there is the fantastic case of the Ingram family of Olympia, Washington in which Paul Ingram confessed to a myriad of crimes whose memory he had completely repressed, including repeatedly raping both his daughters and one son, getting his daughters to perform sexual favors for his friends, torturing the girls, getting his wife to have sex with animals, and murdering and cannibalizing a great many babies at Satanic rituals. The truly remarkable thing about this example is the willingness of people to be convinced of the bizarre and impossible'a phenomenon that Skeptic readers are only too familiar with. The belief among a significant number of professionals in psychology that such repressed memories are a commonplace greatly facilitates the public's credulity. No fewer than five psychologists and counselors encouraged Ingram in his hallucinations. However, a skeptical psychologist finally asked Ingram about a completely fictitious accusation that Ingram had encouraged his children to have sex while he watched. Sure enough, the next day Ingram came up with a highly detailed repressed memory of watching his children have sex. Ingram, who pleaded guilty to the crimes after belatedly coming to believe in his innocence, is now serving 20 years in prison for 6 counts of child molestation.

Like psychoanalysis itself, RMT has become a political movement bent on enforcing an official orthodoxy. Indeed, given the history of psychoanalysis, it is not in the least surprising that RMT would likewise be an authoritarian political movement. A leading proponent of RMT, Judith Lewis Herman, states that 'Advances in the field occur only when [women] are supported by a political movement powerful enough to legitimate an alliance between investigators and patients and to counteract the ordinary social processes of silencing and denial' (Crews, p. 160). RMT has been behind lengthening the statutes of limitations in some states to periods of 30 years or more to provide enough time for repressed memories of crimes to surface. And, as with any such political movement, it seems superfluous to note that big money is involved, in the case of RMT ranging from fees for therapy, the publication industry, and the litigation industry spawned by this movement.

Perhaps the most notable thing about the uproar over Crews' book is that much of its importance stems from where his articles were originally published, and that says a lot. The original articles were published in the NYRB, that bastion of the intellectual left, which, as Crews notes, is 'almost like pet owners who had negligently or maliciously consigned their parakeet to the mercies of an ever-lurking cat' (Crews, 1995, p. 288). The implication is that publications like the NYRB have been instrumental in propagating psychoanalytic and similar doctrines as scientifically and intellectually reputable for decades, and it also suggests that had Crews published his articles in a less visible and less politicized medium they could have been safely ignored as has commonly been the practice over the long history of psychoanalysis.

To this we must add a discussion of the very central role of psychoanalysis in the intellectual left of this century and the role of publications like the NYRB in maintaining and nourishing the scientific veneer of psychoanalysis. The influence of psychoanalysis has hardly been confined to psychotherapeutic practice, but has been a pervasive influence on 20th-century Western culture. In the eyes of many, Freud is the most towering intellectual figure of the century, second perhaps only to Marx.

For his part, Crews seems to regard the influence as entirely benign, so much so that he thinks psychoanalysis may have been justified because of its cultural influences even if it is entirely lacking as a scientific enterprise. He states that there is 'some merit' to the idea that psychoanalysis and its practitioners exercised a benign cultural influence by ridding psychiatry of 'sinister theories of hereditary degeneration and racial inferiority,' and by 'their candor about sex, their cultivation of a developmental perspective, their addressing of the problems and opportunities posed by transference, and their belief in deep and intricate continuities among a patient's disparate productions of symptom and language.... To be progressive, after all, a psychological movement needn't put forward accurate hypotheses; it need only raise useful new questions and attract followers who are eater to put aside the older dispensation' (p. 70-71).

But whether one views the cultural influences of psychoanalysis as benign is largely a political, rather than a scientific matter. Psychoanalysis never, at any stage of its history, approached the status of a scientific discipline. What was really central to psychoanalysis and why it seems impervious to all rational objections is that first and foremost psychoanalysis achieved and retained its status over the decades because it had become a pillar of the intellectual and cultural left, what Paul Hollander (1991) has dubbed 'the adversary culture.'

There is in fact a very long association between psychoanalysis and the political and cultural left. Support of radical and Marxist ideals was common among Freud's early followers. Leftist attitudes have been common in later years among psychoanalysts (Hale 1995, 31; Kurzweil 1989, 36, 284), among the groups in Berlin and Vienna during the post-World War I era (Kurzweil 1989; 46-47), in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union where all of the top psychoanalysts were Bolsheviks and Trotsky supporters and were among the most powerful political figures in the country (Chamberlain 1995), and in America from the 1920's to the present (Torrey 1992, 33, 93ff; 122-123). Given the institutional structure of psychoanalysis as an authoritarian political movement, one is left with the conclusion that one of the century's major intellectual and cultural forces was in fact a highly disciplined political movement masquerading as science.

Psychoanalysis has proved to be a veritable treasure trove of ideas for those intent on developing radical critiques of Western culture, beginning with Freud's own Totem and Taboo and Civilization and Its Discontents. Recent Freudian scholarship shows very clearly that Freud tended to make dogmatic claims about the source of his patients' unhappiness based on nothing more than his own suggestions. His failure to follow even the minimum standards of scientific or rational intellectual inquiry extended to his cultural writings as well. Freud's wider speculations on human culture rest on a number of extremely naive, pre-scientific conceptualizations of human sexual behavior and its relation to culture. Particularly outrageous was Freud's 'primal horde' story of how over many generations sons had killed their fathers in order to mate with their mothers until Oedipal guilt had forced them to repress this activity. The theory is not only completely speculative and indeed attempts to explain a non-existent phenomenon'the Oedipal complex, but also requires Lamarckian inheritance, a theory that, at least by the time of Civilization and Its Discontents (where the doctrine was reaffirmed), had been completely rejected by the scientific community.

This was a self-consciously speculative theory, but Freud's speculations clearly had an agenda. Rather than provide speculations which reaffirmed the moral and intellectual basis of the culture of his day, his speculations were an integral part of his war on culture'so much so that he viewed Totem and Taboo as a victory over Rome and the Catholic Church (Rothman & Isenberg, 1974). In Freud's eyes he was the Carthaginian general Hannibal fighting the evil Romans that to him represented Western civilization. Peter Gay notes that Freud was proud of his enemies'the persecuting Roman Catholic Church, the hypocritical bourgeoisie, the obtuse psychiatric establishment, the materialistic Americans'so proud, indeed, that they grew in his mind into potent specters far more malevolent and far less divided than they were in reality. He likened himself to Hannibal, to Ahasuerus, to Joseph, to Moses, all men with historic missions, potent adversaries, and difficult fates. (Peter Gay 1988, p. 604)

Gay states that 'A charged and ambivalent symbol, Rome stood for Freud's most potent concealed erotic, and only slightly less concealed aggressive wishes ....' Rome was 'a supreme prize and incomprehensible menace' (Gay 1988, p. 132). Freud himself described this 'Hannibal fantasy' as 'one of the driving forces of [my] mental life' (McGrath 1974, p. 35; see also Sulloway 1979).

In this regard, it is interesting to note that Totem and Taboo and Civilization and Its Discontents present the view that the restrictions on sexual behavior, so apparent as an aspect of Western culture during Freud's life, are the source of art, love, and even civilization itself. Freud's conceptions of the origins and function of sexual repression in Western societies contain, as Peter Gay (1988, p. 329) notes, some of Freud's 'most subversive conjectures.' Neurosis and unhappiness are the price to be paid for civilization because neurosis and unhappiness are the inevitable result of repressing sexual urges. As countercultural guru Herbert Marcuse wrote concerning this aspect of Freud's thought:

The notion that a non-repressive civilization is impossible is a cornerstone of Freudian theory. However, his theory contains elements that break through this rationalization; they shatter the predominant tradition of Western thought and even suggest its reversal. His work is characterized by an uncompromising insistence on showing the repressive content of the highest values and achievements of culture. (Marcuse, 1974, p. 17)

Western culture has been placed on the couch, and the role of psychoanalysis is to help the patient adjust somewhat to a sick, psychopathology-inducing society: 'While psychoanalytic theory recognizes that the sickness of the individual is ultimately caused and sustained by the sickness of his civilization, psychoanalytic therapy aims at curing the individual so that he can continue to function as part of a sick civilization without surrendering to it altogether' (Marcuse 1974, p. 245).

Freud appears to have been well aware that his conjectures were entirely speculative. Freud was 'amused' when Totem and Taboo was termed a 'just so' story by a British anthropologist in 1920, and stated only that his critic 'was deficient in phantasy' (in Gay 1988, p. 327), apparently a concession that the work was indeed fanciful. Freud stated that 'It would be nonsensical to strive for exactitude with this material, as it would be unreasonable to demand certainty' (quoted in Gay, 1988, p. 330). Similarly, Freud described Civilization and Its Discontents as 'an essentially dilettantish foundation' on which 'rises a thinly tapered analytic investigation' (quoted in Gay 1988, p. 543). And Freud was well aware that his attack on religion in The Future of an Illusion was scientifically weak, describing it by noting that 'the analytic content of the work is very thin' (quoted in Gay 1988, 524).

Freud's countercultural writings scarcely exhaust the mischief wreaked by psychoanalysis. The works of Herbert Marcuse, Norman Brown, Wilhelm Reich, Jaques Lacan, Erich Fromm and a host of neo-Freudians come to mind immediately, but this barely scratches the surface. Psychoanalysis influenced thought in a wide range of areas, including sociology, child rearing, criminology, anthropology, literary criticism, art, literature, and the popular media such as TV and the movies to the point that, as Kurzweil (1989, p. 102) notes, 'something like a culture of psychoanalysis was being established.' E. F. Torrey (1992. p. 37) describes in some detail the spread of the movement in the United States, originally through the actions of a small group of activists with access to the popular media, the academic world, and the arts, to a pervasive influence in the 1950's. 'It is a long road from a beachhead among New York intellectuals to a widespread influence in almost every phase of American life. Literature, drama, anthropology, sociology, child rearing, education, criminology, and many other parts of American thought and culture were to become permeated by Freud.'

Given this association of psychoanalysis and the Left, it is not surprising that Crews' critique of psychoanalysis was itself analyzed and found to be as an attack on the Left: Eli Zaretsky (1994, p. 67) states such critiques 'are continuous with the attack on the Left that began with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968.... They continue the repudiation of the revolutionary and utopian possibilities glimpsed in the 1960s.'

Psychoanalysis was indeed an integral component of the countercultural movement of the 1960's and a central pillar of the intellectual zeitgeist of prominent countercultural figures such as Herbert Marcuse. In Eros and Civilization (1974/1955) Marcuse points the way to a non-exploitative utopian socialist civilization that would result from the complete end of sexual repression in a manner that goes beyond Freud's ideas in Civilization and Its Discontents only in its even greater optimism regarding the beneficial effects of ending sexual repression. Marcuse accepts Freud's theory that Western culture is pathogenic due to the repression of sexual urges, paying homage to the one who 'recognized the work of repression in the highest values of Western civilization'which presuppose and perpetuate unfreedom and suffering' (p. 240).

Attacks on psychoanalysis are therefore correctly perceived by Zaretsky as attacking a cornerstone of left/radical political culture. It is surely correct that psychoanalysis brought us a greater candor about sex. It is also reasonable to suppose that its influence has since extended far beyond sexual candor to become an obsession with sexual behavior. From its beginnings, psychoanalytic perspectives on sexuality have drawn the criticism of those concerned about the harmful influence of Freudian ideas on mainstream family life.

Freud's ideas have in fact often been labeled as subversive. Indeed, '[Freud himself] was convinced that it was in the very nature of psychoanalytic doctrine to appear shocking and subversive. On board ship to America he did not feel that he was bringing that country a new panacea. With his typically dry wit he told his traveling companions, 'We are bringing them the plague'' (Mannoni 1971, 168).

Peter Gay terms Freud's work generally as 'subversive' (1987, 140), his sexual ideology in particular as 'deeply subversive for his time' (p. 148); and his Totem and Taboo as containing 'subversive conjectures' (p. 327) in its analysis of culture. Rothman and Isenberg (1974) convincingly argue that Freud actually viewed the Interpretation of Dreams as a victory over the Catholic Church and that he viewed Totem and Taboo as a successful attempt to analyze the Christian religion in terms of defense mechanisms, primitive drives and neurotic symptomatology. Gay notes that 'while the implications of Darwin's views were threatening and unsettling, they were not quite so directly abrasive, not quite so unrespectable, as Freud's views on infantile sexuality, the ubiquity of perversions, and the dynamic power of unconscious urges' (p. 144).

And the contrast between Freud and Darwin as scientists could scarcely be more clear. Darwin spent years patiently collecting his data and was hesitant to publish his work, agreeing to do so only after another scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, came up with similar ideas. Freud, on the other hand, conducted his career more like a one man PR firm with himself as his only client.

While Darwin was satisfied with revising his work after further reflection and absorbing palpable hits by rational critics, while he trusted the passage of time and the weight of his argumentation, Freud orchestrated his wooing of the public mind through a loyal cadre of adherents, founded periodicals and wrote popularizations that would spread the authorized word, dominated international congresses of analysis until he felt too frail to attend them and after that through surrogates like his daughter Anna. (Gay 1987, 145)

There was a great deal of hostility to psychoanalysis in the German-speaking world centering around the perceived threat of psychoanalysis to mainstream Christian sexual ethics, including the acceptance of masturbation and premarital sex (Kurzweil, 1989, p. 18). By the second decade of the 20th century in America Freud was firmly associated with the movement for sexual freedom and social reform, and he had become the target of social conservatives (Torrey 1992, 16ff). As late as 1956 a psychiatrist discussing psychoanalysis in the American Journal of Psychiatry complained that 'Is it possible that we are developing the equivalent of a secular church, supported by government monies, staffed by a genital-level apostolate unwittingly dispensing a broth of existential atheism, hedonism, and other dubious religio-philosophical ingredients?' (Johnson 1956, p. 40).

And, although other factors are undoubtedly involved, it is remarkable that the increasing trend toward and acceptance of what an evolutionist would term low-investment parenting (i.e., parenting that involves a low level of resources available for children) in America largely coincides with the triumph of the psychoanalytic and radical critiques of American culture represented by the political and cultural success of the counter-cultural movement of the 1960's. Since 1970 the rate of single parenting has increased from 1/10 families to 1/3 families (Norton & Miller 1992), and there have been dramatic increases in teenage sexual activity and teenage childbearing without marriage (Furstenberg 1991). There is excellent evidence for an association among teenage single parenting, poverty, lack of education, and poor developmental outcomes for children (e.g., Dornbusch & Gray 1988; Furstenberg & Brooks-Gunn 1989; McLanahan & Booth 1989; Wilson 1993, a, b).

Indeed, all of the negative trends related to the family show very large increases that developed at the same time as the triumph of the countercultural movement beginning in the mid-1960's (Herrnstein & Murray 1994; Kaus, 1995), including increases in trends toward lower levels of marriage, 'cataclysmic' increases in divorce rates (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; p. 172), and higher rates of illegitimacy. In the case of divorce and illegitimacy rates, the data indicate an enormous shift upward during the 1960's from previously existing trend lines, with the upward trend lines established during that period continuing into the present. For good, bad, or both, the 1960's marked a watershed period in American cultural history.

The sexual revolution is 'the most obvious culprit' underlying the decline in the importance of marriage (Herrnstein & Murray 1994, 544) and its concomitant increase in low-investment parenting.

What is striking about the 1960s 'sexual revolution,' as it has properly been called, is how revolutionary it was, in sensibility as well as reality. In 1965, 69 percent of American women and 65 percent of men under the age of thirty said that premarital sex was always or almost always wrong; by 1972, these figures had plummeted to 24 percent and 21 percent... In 1990, only 6 percent of British men and women under the age of thirty-four believed that it was always or almost always wrong. (Gertrude Himmelfarb 1995, 236)

Psychoanalysis has a lot to answer for. The contemporary upsurge of victims of RMT and the long line of individual victims like Horace Frink and Dora Bauer are only a small part of its moral wreckage. But don't expect either psychoanalysis or RMT to die soon. Because they are fundamentally religious and political rather than scientific, these movements have a life of their own and will expire only when they are perceived as no longer serving the personal or political interests of their advocates.

Indeed, one might note that precisely the same sort of uproar greeted the publication of Derek Freeman's expos�� of another pillar of the cultural left'Margaret Mead's work in Samoa (see Caton, 1990; Freeman, 1983; 1991). Here the idealized father figure was Franz Boas who quite self-consciously originated his movement in order to combat evolutionary approaches to anthropology, replacing Darwinian (and some hyper- and pseudo-Darwinian) approaches with the ideology that human nature is infinitely malleable and that humans are entirely a product of their culture. The Boasian school has dominated anthropology since the 1920's, and this school and its postmodern offspring seem to be in no danger of losing ground to the new breed of evolutionists who have sprung up as a result of the sociobiological revolution in the biological sciences.

The fact that the NYRB published Crews' attacks on psychoanalysis may be a vital sign that the life of psychoanalysis as an underpinning of the intellectual left is weakening. The NYRB is only one of many elements of the vast media and intellectual network that has supported psychoanalysis throughout the century, but all signs are that psychoanalysis has become an intellectual and scientific embarrassment to all save the truest of true believers. The fact that its scientific stature has been utterly discredited in such a prestigious forum and by someone who is sympathetic to the cultural influences it has generated suggests that psychoanalysis may well have lost its political punch.

But skeptics need not fear having nothing left to be skeptical of. Look for a new, cult-like, politically-inspired, scientific-sounding ideology to take its place soon at a university and psychotherapeutic clinic near you. It's also a safe bet that critics of such movements will be diagnosed/cleared/re-associated/analyzed/deconstructed as suffering from mental/moral/spiritual disorder:

What passes today for Freud bashing is simply the long-postponed exposure of Freudian ideas to the same standards of noncontradiction, clarity, testability, cogency, and parsimonious explanatory power that prevail in empirical discourse at large. Step by step, we are learning that Freud has been the most overrated figure in the entire history of science and medicine'one who wrought immense harm through the propagation of false etiologies, mistaken diagnoses, and fruitless lines of inquiry.

Still the legend dies hard, and those who challenge it continue to be greeted like rabid dogs. (Crews 1995, 298-299)

Spoken like a true Skeptic!

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First Published in Skeptic, 4(3),  94–99. Reprinted in The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, Michael Shermer (Ed.). ABC-CLIO, December 2002.

American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?…

American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?…

By Chris Hedges.

Ex: http://www.attackthesystem.com/

 

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.

The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty to self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on television as rubes stupid enough to cling to this antiquated behavior are voted off reality shows. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame, cheered on by millions of viewers, elect to “disappear” the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show America’s Next Top Model, a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities that can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows persistently teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition and a constant quest for notoriety and attention.

Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens.

It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Michael Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. And it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic assets to investors.

We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us investment houses like Goldman Sachs … that willfully trashed the global economy and stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a reality-based world or avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies.

The tantalizing illusions offered by our consumer culture, however, are vanishing for most citizens as we head toward collapse. The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The jobs we are shedding are not coming back, as the White House economist Lawrence Summers tacitly acknowledges when he talks of a “jobless recovery.” The belief that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the accumulation of vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a fraud. Freedom can no longer be conflated with the free market. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

America is sinking under trillions in debt it can never repay and stays afloat by frantically selling about $2 billion in Treasury bonds a day to the Chinese. It saw 2.8 million people lose their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8,000 people a day – and stands idle as they are joined by another 2.4 million people this year. It refuses to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the use of torture, and sees no reason to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Deficits are pushing individual states to bankruptcy and forcing the closure of everything from schools to parks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have squandered trillions of dollars, appear endless. There are 50 million Americans in real poverty and tens of millions of Americans in a category called “near poverty.” One in eight Americans – and one in four children – depend on food stamps to eat. And yet, in the midst of it all, we continue to be a country consumed by happy talk and happy thoughts. We continue to embrace the illusion of inevitable progress, personal success and rising prosperity. Reality is not considered an impediment to desire.

When a culture lives within an illusion it perpetuates a state of permanent infantilism or childishness. As the gap widens between the illusion and reality, as we suddenly grasp that it is our home being foreclosed or our job that is not coming back, we react like children. We scream and yell for a savior, someone who promises us revenge, moral renewal and new glory. It is not a new story. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually, emotionally and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans and will usher America into a new dark age. It was the economic collapse in Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in Tsarist Russia that opened the door for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to loudmouth talk show hosts, whom we naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. And as in all totalitarian societies, those who do not pay fealty to the illusions imposed by the state become the outcasts, the persecuted.

The decline of American empire began long before the current economic meltdown or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It began before the first Gulf War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard historian Charles Maier, from an “empire of production” to an “empire of consumption.” By the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate away at Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and domestic oil production began its steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that primarily produced to one that primarily consumed. We started borrowing to maintain a level of consumption as well as an empire we could no longer afford. We began to use force, especially in the Middle East, to feed our insatiable thirst for cheap oil. We substituted the illusion of growth and prosperity for real growth and prosperity. The bill is now due. America’s most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who sold us the perverted ideology of free-market capitalism and globalization. They have dynamited the very foundations of our society. In the 17th century these speculators would have been hung. Today they run the government and consume billions in taxpayer subsidies.

As the pressure mounts, as the despair and desperation reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. The motive behind these measures is not to fight terrorism or to bolster national security. It is to seize and maintain internal control. It is about controlling us.

And yet, even in the face of catastrophe, mass culture continues to assure us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, by Hollywood or by Christian preachers, is magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into a cheerful conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers offshore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth. And it keeps us from fighting back.

Resistance movements will have to look now at the long night of slavery, the decades of oppression in the Soviet Union and the curse of fascism for models. The goal will no longer be the possibility of reforming the system but of protecting truth, civility and culture from mass contamination. It will require the kind of schizophrenic lifestyle that characterizes all totalitarian societies. Our private and public demeanors will often have to stand in stark contrast. Acts of defiance will often be subtle and nuanced. They will be carried out not for short term gain but the assertion of our integrity. Rebellion will have an ultimate if not easily definable purpose. The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world. The goal will become the ability to endure…..

Psychopathologie: une introduction phénoménologique

Psychopathologie : une introduction phénoménologique

par Pierre LE VIGAN

Auteur d’un ouvrage de référence sur les personnalités hystériques, Georges Charbonneau, psychiatre, est aussi éditeur et animateur de la revue Le Cercle herméneutique. Il vient de publier un livre qui condense ses travaux et réflexions – et ceux de l’école de phénoménologie psychopathologique – depuis plus de vingt ans. Cette école, parfois aussi appelé psychothérapie existentielle, reste marquée par les noms d’Eugène Minkowski (Traité de psychopathologie), Ludwig Binswanger (Mélancolie et manie, Trois formes manquées de la présence humaine), Hubertus Tellenbach (La mélancolie), Wolfgang Blankenburg (La perte de l’évidence naturelle), Arthur Tatossian (La phénoménologie des psychoses) et quelques autres. En toile de fond c’est le Martin Heidegger d’Être et temps (1927) dont les hypothèses sont sollicitées et en quelque sorte remises au travail.

C’est une entreprise ambitieuse et féconde. Le premier tome de l’ouvrage de Charbonneau est essentiellement consacré aux névroses. Il concerne aussi les personnalités pathologiques. Le second tome est consacré aux psychoses : délire et paranoïa. Il aborde donc les crises du Soi, ce qu’on appelle l’ipséité. L’ouvrage remplit pour l’essentiel son cahier des charges : ouvrir un tableau articulé et dialectique des manifestations psychopathologiques et de leurs significations comme déformation, ou altération, de la présence humaine. Certes, le plan traduit quelques flottements : les dépressions non mélancoliques donc non psychotiques sont ainsi traitées dans le tome II essentiellement consacré aux psychoses; elles eussent été plus à leur place dans le tome I, à côté du chapitre sur la fatigue et ses différentes formes. Sans doute aussi, l’usage répété de certains termes « bricolés » (ruptivité, nostrité, mienneté, chacunité, sienneté…) peut agacer : la ressource de la langue française offre bien des possibilités et c’est la grandeur d’intellectuels généralistes comme Alain Finkielkraut, Luc Ferry ou André Comte-Sponville (ou Ludovic Maubreuil ou Éric Werner) d’énoncer des choses subtiles avec les mots de tout le monde et dans une langue compréhensible par tout homme de bonne volonté. L’usage de mots complexes ou pseudo-innovants vise bien souvent à créer une barrière artificielle, qui n’est autre qu’une barrière sociale de distinction au sens de Pierre Bourdieu, et crée une désagréable atmosphère d’élitisme autoproclamé.

Il n’en reste pas moins que le lecteur aurait tort d’en rester à ce possible et légitime agacement, non plus qu’au fait que le numéro de Krisis sur la psychologie n’est pas cité alors que les proximités de certaines des analyses développées avec celles du livre de Charbonneau sont évidentes et connues de l’auteur. Qu’importe. Krisis veut justement dire jugement. Et ce sont les idées qu’il faut juger. Or, dans le présent ouvrage, l’analyse des malaises dans l’homme, des délires, des décrochages existentiels, des ruptures d’avec le monde commun, de l’hystérie en termes de position dans l’espace, des pathologies de la personnalité en termes d’expérience du monde, et en termes d’analyse de l’humeur  c’est-à-dire le thymique, constituent de vrais points d’appui pour chacun d’entre nous, confronté à notre fragilité d’être-jeté-dans-le-monde. Par ailleurs, des développements de concepts sont bienvenus, tels l’historialité, l’auroréal et le vespéral (ou, pour le dire plus simplement, le matinal et le couchant) qui, pour avoir déjà été analysées (souvent par la sémiotique, avec notamment Jacques Fontanille et Claude Zilberberg) avaient rarement été synthétisés de manière aussi complète et dans une perspective unificatrice. Un livre indispensable pour mieux se comprendre, soi-même et les autres, soi-même avec les autres, soi même jamais tout à fait comme les autres.

Pierre Le Vigan

Georges Charbonneau, Introduction à la psychopathologie phénoménologique, MJWf éditions, diffusion Vrin, tome I, 236 p., 20 €, tome II, 215 p., 20 €.

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Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

URL to article: http://www.europemaxima.com/?p=1991

Guerre et psychologie

Guerre et psychologie

par Jean-Gilles Malliarakis

L'opération de Libye comme la tragédie de la Côte d'Ivoire nous ramènent durement à la réalité du monde. L'Europe consommatique comme l'éducation soixante huitarde avaient voulu, depuis un demi-siècle, ignorer : la guerre. La voilà de retour. On ne peut pas s'en réjouir, on peut seulement espérer que son avertissement, aujourd'hui encore à moindre frais, du moins vu de Paris, réveille les opinions.

Entre l'époque du Livre banc sur la Défense de 1972, écrit sous l'influence ministérielle du jacobin Michel Debré, et celui de 2008, les doctrines stratégiques et les capacités militaires de la France ont changé, radicalement. La nature même des conflits, les ennemis potentiels ou déclarés, les théâtres d'opérations se sont déplacés.

Paradoxalement aussi, un chef d'État-major de l'armée de Terre tel que le général Elrick Irastorza a pu estimer le 22 octobre 2010 à Coëtquidan "particulièrement compliqué" voire même "anxiogène" le format actuel et futur de nos moyens de défense. Et, simultanément, jamais l'uniforme français n'a été déployé sur autant de territoires, pour des missions éloignées, aux caractères de plus en plus complexes.

De la guerre coloniale selon Gallieni à la contre-insurrection du général américain Petraeus l'objectif semble cependant toujours le même : "transformer l'adversaire en administré". Et, tragiquement, l'épée demeure aujourd'hui encore "l'axe du monde" – ceci pour reprendre la formule d'un homme qui sut si bien, tout au long de sa propre carrière, utiliser, par ailleurs, les micros.

Or, dans la préparation comme dans la gestion des conflits, dans le vote des budgets des armées comme dans la conduite et l'exécution des opérations, l'état d'esprit des individus, des foules et des dirigeants, joue le rôle fondamental.

La psychologie de la guerre redevient dès lors une matière urgente.

En 1915, Gustave Le Bon, dont l'ouvrage sur la "Psychologie des Foules" (1895) fait aujourd'hui encore autorité, lui consacrait un livre. Dans le contexte du premier conflit mondial, l'éditeur avait intitulé l'édition originale : "Enseignements psychologiques de la Guerre européenne". Sous-titre explicatif dans la manière du temps : "Les causes économiques, affectives et mystiques de la guerre. Les forces psychologiques en jeu dans les batailles. Les variations de la personnalité. Les haines de races. Les problèmes de la paix. L'avenir."

L'ambition scientifique, sociologique et objective y tranche avec ce qui se publiait à l'époque, dans le cadre de ce terrible contexte d'affrontement européen. Il étonnera peut-être le lecteur actuel par les développements qu'il consacre au bellicisme allemand, à son hégémonisme commercial d'avant-guerre et au pangermanisme. On remarquera cependant qu'il demeure singulièrement libre, d'esprit et d'écriture, s'agissant des motivations des Alliés. Il ne les résume aucunement en une simple, fraîche et joyeuse "guerre du Droit". Présentée pour telle par ses propagandistes, elle se révélera tout autre.

On notera en particulier un aspect essentiel des années qui avaient précédé le déclenchement de cet "orage d'acier". Elles avaient été marquées, de manière pacifique, par une influence de plus en plus forte, au centre du continent, du pays alors le plus puissant et le plus dynamique, rival sans cesse grandissant des empires maritimes et financiers.

On remarquera également ici un parallélisme très fort entre les deux guerres mondiales : on est tenté de considérer que, de ce point de vue, elles en forment une seule, comme si la seconde prolongeait la première dont elle accentuait simplement les traits, comme le conflit que Thucydide décrivit, expliqua et synthétisa sous le nom de Guerre du Péloponnèse. Celle-ci, à la fin du Ve siècle avait frappé à mort la Grèce des cités. La nôtre allait mettre un terme en Europe, au XXe siècle à l'idée de souveraineté des nations.

Résolument, Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) s'inscrit en faux face aux explications d'inspiration matérialiste et marxisante.

"Derrière les événements dont nous voyons se dérouler le cours, écrit-il ainsi, se trouve l’immense région des forces immatérielles qui les firent naître.
Les phénomènes du monde visible ont leur racine dans un monde invisible où s’élaborent les sentiments et les croyances qui nous mènent.
Cette région des causes est la seule dont nous nous proposons d’aborder l’étude.
La guerre qui mit tant de peuples aux prises éclata comme un coup de tonnerre dans une Europe pacifiste, bien que condamnée à rester en armes."

Tout conspirait donc pour qu'un tel écrit soit relégué dans l'oubli des textes maudits, politiquement incorrects.

Au lendemain de la victoire de 1918, les Alliés tournèrent en effet le dos aux enseignements de son auteur. On s'engouffra dans le mythe de la sécurité collective. On prétendit mettre "la guerre hors la loi" : on connaît la suite. Cet ouvrage terrible et prophétique, annonçait en somme la reprise des hostilités. Il démontre, aussi, combien les dirigeants politiques, bien connus du public, rois ou ministres, se trouvent régulièrement dépassés par les forces intérieures, celles de l'inconscient des peuples.

JG Malliarakis

Si cette chronique vous a intéressé, vous aimerez peut-être :

"Psychologie de la Guerre" par Gustave Le Bon,
un livre de 372 pages en vente au prix de 29 euros franco de port, à commander en ligne ou par correspondance aux Éditions du Trident 39 rue du Cherche Midi 75006 Paris tel : [phone].

Puisque vous avez aimé l'Insolent

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La « tension psychologique insurrectionnelle »

Par Philippe Grasset

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com/

(…) Dans Notes sur l’impossible “révolution” du 24 septembre 2009, sur dedefensa.org, était exprimée la conviction que les mouve

Honoré Daumier, "L'insurrection" (1860)

ments d’insurrection et de révolte auxquels nous avons l’habitude de nous référer sont définitivement dépassés parce que totalement inefficaces, voire contreproductifs.

Pour diverses raisons exposées dans l’analyse, de tels mouvements sont condamnés par avance s’ils prétendent obtenir directement un résultat décisif correspondant au but d’insurrection de ceux qui l’initient. Pour moi, c’est un fait indiscutable, même si le mouvement parvient à un résultat tangible.

 

(Résultats tangibles de telles actions, si elles pouvaient avoir lieu ? Soit changer le régime des retraites, soit, plus hypothétiquement, prendre d’assaut le Palais de l’Elysée et habiller Sarko en sans-culotte ou en scout du Secours Catholique ; soit même, pour des Irlandais colériques et qu’on sait être coriaces et courageux, des émeutes insurrectionnelles ne menant qu’au même cul de sac de la prise d’un pouvoir politique dont ils ne sauraient que faire puisque leur pays, comme les autres, n’est qu’un maillon du système et rien d’autre. Le seul cas où une action politique réelle peut donner directement un résultat décisif, par son caractère intrinsèque de psychologie insurrectionnelle réalisant effectivement une attaque contre le cœur de la psychologie du système, c’est l’éclatement de l’Amérique avec la destruction de l’American Dream qui s’ensuit, – perspective qui, soit dit en passant, ne doit pas nous paraître rocambolesque lorsqu’on lit le dernier article de Paul Krugman.)

Cette affirmation de “l’impossibilité d’une révolution” selon le sens classique ne doit certainement pas être prise comme une affirmation désespérée, désenchantée et nihiliste si vous voulez, mais simplement comme la prise en compte du fait que nous sommes dans une époque différente, où les forces en action sont complètement différentes de celles qu’on observait dans l’époque précédente (Epoque psychopolitique et plus du tout géopolitique, où il n’y a plus aucun rapport de cause à effet entre une action politique de rupture violente, même réussie, et un changement décisif du système).

Voilà mon postulat de base, qui s’applique essentiellement dans les pays du bloc occidentaliste-américaniste, – c’est-à-dire dans les seules situation où vous pouvez toucher le système au cœur ; dans ces conditions nouvelles, “toucher au cœur le système” deviendrait alors, plutôt qu’effectivement parvenir à sa destruction d’une façon directe, accélérer puissamment, voire décisivement, son mouvement de destruction interne déjà en cours, du fait de ses propres tares fondamentales.

Je vais tenter d’expliquer les caractères de cette nouvelle situation d’abord, ce qui peut être fait ensuite, comment ce qui peut être fait peut être exploité efficacement, sinon décisivement, enfin.

La psychologie, l’arme de l’insurrection

Je mets en avant bien entendu, avant toute chose, le facteur de la psychologie, qui est complètement essentiel dans mon propos. C’est par lui que tout passe, à cause de la puissance du système de la communication, instauré par le système général mais qui, à cause de ses spécificités contradictoires, joue un “double jeu”, alors que l’autre composante du système général, le système du technologisme, est dans une crise si profonde qu’elle pourrait être qualifiée de terminale, – ce qui est ma conviction.

(Sur ce dernier point, quelques mots… Je me demande chaque jour, chaque heure, chaque minute, comment on peut encore substantiver en termes de capacités politiques et militaristes également efficaces jusqu’à lui prêter un caractère de quasi invincibilité, un système dotée de cette puissante effectivement colossale, qui étouffe littéralement sous l’accumulation de centaines et de centaines de milliards de dollars annuels, qui est incapable de fabriquer un avion de combat [JSF], incapable de prendre une décision contractuelle [KC-X], incapable au bout de neuf ans de comprendre les données fondamentales absolument primaires de la guerre où elle se débat comme dans un pot de mélasse [Afghanistan], etc. Et l’on croirait, par exemple, qu’un excrément bureaucratique de plus [le “concept stratégique de l’OTAN”] irait changer quelque chose, sinon accroître encore le désordre général et la paralysie ossifiée de cette bureaucratie ? Il y a parfois l’impression qu’une telle observation du système par ceux qui professent leur immense aversion pour lui, témoigne également de la part de ces mêmes critiques d’une singulière fascination pour lui, comme une croyance paradoxale dans la magie de ce même système. C’est lui faire bien de l’honneur, et s’en informer fort mal.)

Poursuivons… Donc le système de la communication est un Janus. Il sert le système général mais, également, il le trahit joyeusement dès que les arguments auxquels il est sensible (sensationnalisme, méthodologie de l’effet, etc.) se retrouvent dans des appréciations contestataires du système, non par goût de la trahison mais par goût de l’apparat et de l’effet de ces informations, qui ont alors sa faveur puisqu’elles font marcher la machine (Vous savez, cette remarque désolée que fait parfois tel ou tel président, tel ou tel ministre, aux journalistes, même des journalistes-Pravda ses fidèles alliés : “mais pourquoi mettez-vous toujours l’accent sur les mauvaises nouvelles ?” Pardi, parce que c’est ça qui est “sensationnel”, qui fait marcher le système de la communication, et parce qu’il n’y a rien de mieux que les “mauvaises nouvelles” pour faire marcher le système, et qu’en plus il n’y a plus aujourd’hui que des “mauvaises nouvelles”).

Par conséquent, Janus est de tous les coups, il marche avec son temps (“il n’y a plus aujourd’hui que des mauvaises nouvelles”) et il est ainsi devenu, sans intention délibérée, la plus formidable machine à influencer les psychologies dans le sens de la déstructuration du système.

En répercutant les commentaires alarmistes des serviteurs du système concernant les dangers d’insurrection des populations de notre système pourtant si cajolées de mots ronflants, le système de la communication contribue grandement à créer un climat psychologique insurrectionnel. Mais ce climat n’engendre rien de décisif dans ce qu’on juge être décisif, – l’action “révolutionnaire”, – parce que nul ne sait comment s’insurger efficacement de cette façon-là.

C’est cette idée de cette situation sans précédent, qui renverse complètement les situations connues : hier, tout le monde savait ce que serait une “révolte”, c’est-à-dire par le moyen de la “violence révolutionnaire”, l’inconnue résidant dans le fait qu’on ignorait quand existerait une volonté ou une occasion de la faire ; aujourd’hui, tout le monde admet qu’il existe partout une volonté d’insurrection, l’inconnue résidant dans le fait qu’on ignore quelle forme pourrait et devrait prendre cette insurrection.

Alors, il y a partout des protestations, des manifestations, des initiatives spontanées parfois étranges, qui ne débouchent sur rien de définitif, et l’on s’en désole ; mais l’on n’a pas raison parce qu’elles ont aussi l’effet d’accroître constamment cette tension psychologique insurrectionnelle.

L’essentiel est dans ce bouillonnement psychologique. Prenez le cas d’Eric Cantona (voir le texte du 22 novembre 2010) ; type pas sérieux, Cantona, provocateur, people et ainsi de suite. Ce qui est accessoire en l’espèce – mais d’ailleurs sans préjuger des effets éventuels de cette “initiative spontanée” (retrait massif d’argent des banques), car nous ne sommes pas au bout de nos surprises –, c’est de prendre trop au sérieux la proposition de Cantona, en disant et expliquant “ça marchera”, ou bien “ridicule, ça ne marchera pas”.

Pour l’instant (cette restriction bien comprise), l’analyse de la chose n’a strictement aucun intérêt. Ce qui importe et rien d’autre, c’est la contribution involontaire de Cantona, idole people des foules, à la montée de la tension psychologique insurrectionnelle. On pourrait définir ce que je nomme “psychologie insurrectionnelle”, un exemple très précis et extrême à cet égard, dans un texte de l’écrivain et poète US Linh Dinh, sur OnLineJournal, le 15 novembre 2010.

Première phrase du texte : « Revolt is in the air » [La révolte est dans l'air]. Puis un long catalogue des révoltes qui pourraient avoir lieu aux USA, jusqu’à la sécession, jusqu’aux révoltes armées, etc., mais chaque fois avec l’observation que cela ne se fera pas, parce que la population est trop apathique, les conditions ne s’y prêtent pas, etc. Donc, constat pessimiste, sinon désespérant ?

Et puis cette conclusion, qui contredit tout le reste, – sauf la première phrase : «I have a feeling, however, that we may be nearing the end of being jerked back and forth like this, that even the most insensate and silly among us is about to explode » [J'ai le sentiment, toutefois, que nous pourrions bientôt finir d'être trimballés en avant et en arrière comme cela, que même le plus insensé et stupides d'entre nous est sur le point d'exploser].

…Tout cela conduisait, dans le même texte référencé (sur Cantona), à cette conclusion qui me paraît digne d’intérêt pour cette réflexion : «Peut-être déterminera-t-on finalement, selon l’évolution de ce “climat” de la recherche d’une nouvelle forme de révolte et de la tension psychologique que cela ne cesse de renforcer, que c’est le développement même de ce climat qui est, en soi, la nouvelle forme de la révolte…» (Encore une fois, le mot “révolte” n’aurait pas dû être employé, mais bien celui d’“insurrection”.)

Pour conclure cet aspect de l’analyse par une tentative de chronologie datée, je proposerais l’hypothèse que cette phase d’“insurrection psychologique” où nous sommes entrés est la phase suivante de l’évolution des peuples face à la grande crise de notre système et contre ceux qui servent encore ce système, après ce que je nommerais la phase de “résistance psychologique” qui s’est développée entre les années 2003-2004 et 2008-2009…

Cela correspond par ailleurs, et ceci n’est pas sans rapport avec cela, avec ce que j’estime être, dans l’année que nous terminons, l’entrée dans la phase active de la crise eschatologique du monde, cette crise qui se développe comme un volcan entre en activité vers son éruption, au travers de la pression des crises de l’environnement, des ressources, de la crise climatique, etc.

TINA pour nous aussi

Comment analyser d’une façon générale cette situation dans la perspective de ce qui devrait être fait, sinon de ce qui pourrait être fait ?

Je dirais que le but de l’“insurrection” ne doit pas être, n’est pas de “prendre le pouvoir” (c’est-à-dire le système, bien sûr), mais de “détruire” le pouvoir (le système). Il n’est même pas intéressant de l’“affaiblir” avant de le frapper, ce pouvoir, mais, au contraire, de le frapper pour le détruire alors qu’il est au faîte de sa puissance…

Car il est au faîte de sa puissance et le restera, y compris et surtout en conduisant lui-même son processus d’autodestruction, – plus il est puissant, plus sera puissant son processus d’autodestruction, – cela, à l’ombre d’une autre contradiction qui caractérise sa crise terminale : plus il est puissant, plus il est impuissant.

Mises à part les considérations humanitaires dont on connaît l’illusoire vertu et la grandiose inutilité, je dirais que le cynique qui veut la peau du système ne comprendrait pas une seconde ceux qui, se disant eux-mêmes adversaires du système, réclament à grands cris et espèrent ardemment le retrait américaniste d’Afghanistan, même pour les meilleurs motifs du monde.

Que l’OTAN et l’U.S. Army y restent, en Afghanistan, qu’elles y déploient toute leur puissance, tant il est évident qu’elles sont en train de se dévorer elles-mêmes, en aggravant chaque jour leur crise structurelle et la crise psychologique de ceux qui ordonnent et conduisent cette guerre sans but, sans motifs, sans commencement ni fin, sans rien du tout sinon la destruction de soi-même.

Et tout cela doit bien être compris pour ce qui est, au risque de me répéter, pour bien embrasser le caractère complètement inédit de cette situation…

Il n’y a là-dedans ni affrontement classique, ni une sorte de “guerre civile” au sens où nous l’entendons, ni “révolte” justement, comme j’en indiquais la définition au sens classique. Il y a une “attaque” qui est un mélange de pression psychologique et d’action désordonnée suscitées par cette pression psychologique et l’accentuant en retour, – et là, effectivement, nous abordons le champ de l’action qui est possible aujourd’hui, à la place des mouvements “révolutionnaires” classiques et totalement discrédités.

Cette attaque par la “pression psychologique insurrectionnelle” touche le système (ses représentants mais lui-même en tant qu’entité, dirait-on) dans sa propre psychologie, affaiblit cette psychologie dans le sens du déséquilibre, avec toutes les fautes qui en découlent, ce qui accélère effectivement le retournement de sa propre immense puissance contre lui-même.

En attaquant “le pouvoir” (le système), vous attaquez le système, comme l’indiquent justement les parenthèses ; vous n’attaquez pas des hommes mais un système (anthropotechnique si vous voulez, mais aussi bien anthropotechnocratique, etc.), dont j’ai déjà dit ma conviction qu’il évolue de façon absolument autonome, hors de tout contrôle humain, mais au contraire en entretenant une servitude humaine à son avantage, dont celle des dirigeants politiques est une des formes les plus actives.

Ce dernier point indique qu’à la limite, mais une limite qui prend de plus en plus d’importance dans le contexte, l’insurrection réclamée, qui est d’abord une “insurrection psychologique” manifestée par une tension grandissante, doit aussi, et peut-être d’abord, avoir comme objectif naturel de son influence, dans ce cas définie presque comme bienveillante, la psychologie des directions et élites politiques, comme pour venir à leur secours.

Dans cette situation extraordinaire et, contrairement à tous les dogmes et théories sur l’influence, la manipulation, etc., les dernières psychologies “sous influence” de la manipulation du système sont celles des directions et élites politiques, nullement celles des populations. Ces directions et élites politiques sont beaucoup plus prisonnières par auto conditionnement (virtualisme), par aveuglement ou par dérangement psychologique, que complices conscientes et cyniques.

La pression de l’“insurrection psychologique” des peuples doit agir sur elles pour affaiblir leur “dépendance” psychologique du système, pour subvertir leur démarche de soumission et leur position d’asservissement, – en vérité, et j’ironise à peine, pour les libérer, rien de moins…

Pour cette sorte d’action, dont la composante psychologique est essentielle, il faut des mouvements confus, incompréhensibles, parce que justement ces mouvements constituent une force psychologique insurrectionnelle brute semeuse de troubles sans fin dans les psychologies prisonnières du système, qui croient encore à la bonne ordonnance du système, qui craignent le désordre par dessus tout, et ce désordre commençant par la confusion psychologique.

Le seul but, – inconscient, bien plus que conscient, sans aucun doute, – de cette sorte d’action de ces “mouvements confus” est effectivement de “détruire” le pouvoir (le système) ; ces actions ont un aspect nihiliste qui se reflète dans leur confusion, mais ce nihilisme agit comme un contre feu, contre le nihilisme institutionnalisée du système, et elles acquièrent par logique contradictoire un aspect structurant antisystème extrêmement positif… Tout cela, comme vous le constatez, se déroule toujours dans le champ de la psychologie.

Bien entendu, il y a l’exemple de Tea Party. Ne nous lamentons pas si nous ne comprenons pas vraiment le but de Tea Party, bien au contraire ; surtout, surtout, il faut éviter tout jugement idéologique, de celui qu’affectionnent les vieilles lunes de notre establishment progressiste qui se donnent encore la sensation d’exister comme dans les belles années du XXème siècle, autour de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, en agitant l’épouvantail de l’extrême droite et du “populisme”.

Politiquement, Tea Party c’est tout et rien, et c’est n’importe quoi, – et c’est tant mieux ; c’est, par contre, l’archétype du mouvement né d’une “psychologie insurrectionnelle”, qui doit être considéré pour cette dynamique, cette pression de l’insurrection psychologique qu’il fabrique et nullement pour ses motifs confus… L’on conviendra que tout cela n’est pas sans résultats, et quels résultats quand on voit l’évolution vertigineuse de la panique du système washingtonien.

Depuis le 2 novembre, l’establishment washingtonien ne cesse de grossir Tea Party, son action, son influence, bien plus que ne le justifieraient ses résultats aux élections. On construit à partir de lui des monstres qu’on pensait impossibles à Washington, comme l’annonce d’une aile “neo-isolationniste” au sein du parti républicain, laquelle, à force d’annonces et d’avertissements répétés, finit par exister vraiment.

On envisage des réductions dans le budget de la défense et Paul Krugman nous annonce un affrontement politique de rupture à Washington pour le printemps prochain, où Tea Party ne laissera sa place à personne. C’est cela, “détruire” le pouvoir (le système), le forcer à fabriquer lui-même, dans sa toute puissance, les monstres qu’il abomine et qui vont le dévorer. Et le moteur de tout cela, c’est bien la perception d’une irrésistible tension psychologique insurrectionnelle.

Enfin, dira-t-on en pianotant nerveusement sur la table, devant son écran d’ordinateur, lisant ce texte, où tout cela va-t-il mener ? L’esprit et la raison ne peuvent se départir de leur passion pour l’organisation du monde qui soit à leur mesure, où ils tiennent une place essentielle, dont ils peuvent proclamer la gloire à leur avantage… Bien entendu, la question est hors de propos. Pour l’instant on frappe, on frappe et on frappe encore, et l’on frappe principalement par cette pression psychologique insurrectionnelle…

Et le système fait le reste devant cette pression qu’il ne comprend pas mais qui l’enserre, il transforme son immense et invincible puissance en une force contre lui-même par des réactions stupides, absurdes, des maladresses extraordinaires.

Vous dites que le système est très, peut-être trop puissant ? Qui a parlé de le vaincre sur son terrain ? Surtout pas, il faut retourner contre lui, comme un gant, sa puissance énorme, comme le recommande l’honorable Sun tzi. Il s’effondrera ; d’ailleurs, cela est en cours, l’effondrement…

Et après ? Quel monde organiser? Oh, quelle ambition est-ce là… Laissez donc la montagne de fromage pourri et les murs de Jericho s’écrouler avant d’envisager ce qu’on peut mettre à la place, – non, pardon, avant d’envisager ce qui se mettra en place, de soi-même et irrésistiblement, par la grâce de forces puissantes.

Par cette formule, je veux avancer ceci : si l’hypothèse se vérifie et si la “pression psychologique insurrectionnelle” parvient effectivement à participer, sinon décisivement du moins considérablement, à la déstabilisation et à la déstructuration du système jusqu’à son effondrement, c’est que des forces fondamentales, supérieures à nous, auront évidemment favorisé cette issue qui n’est pas de l’empire de la raison, mais plutôt suggérée par l’intuition ; ces forces resteront présentes pour l’étape d’après la Chute et joueront leur rôle, fondamental à mesure…

Pour ce qui nous concerne, pour l’immédiat, nous autres brillants sapiens de l’espèce vulgum pecus, nous n’avons, à l’image du système, que la perspective TINA (There Is No Alternative) ; mais cela, dans une position de contre force, contre le système, car il n’y a pour nous pas d’alternative à la concentration de toutes nos forces dans le but ardent de la destruction d’un tel système, cette “source de tous les maux” dont l’unique but est aujourd’hui la destruction du monde.

Les sapiens revenus sur terre, à leur place, dans le chaos qu’ils ont tant contribué à créer, sont des acteurs parmi d’autres, et pas les plus grandioses, – certainement nous sommes cela, avec une bonne cure d’humilité à suivre, considérant le monstre extraordinaire que notre “génie” pleinement exprimé dans la modernité a contribué à créer.

Qu’ils s’en tiennent, les sapiens, à ce rôle qui n’est pas sans beauté ni dignité, comme l’est l’humilité devant l’ébranlement du monde dont nous ne tenons plus les fils. Ainsi bien compris, ce rôle n’est pas inutile.

Dedefensa

"Le crépuscule d'une idole" de Michel Onfray

Le crépuscule d'une idole (M. Onfray)

 

Ex: http://www.scriptoblog.com/

« Le crépuscule d’une idole » est une charge de Michel Onfray contre Freud. Nous lui devons le distrayant spectacle de la secte psychanalytique en émoi. Toutefois, au-delà du côté ridicule de cette bataille d’intellos et sous-intellos (1), il y a le texte.

Note de lecture, donc. Histoire de savoir de quoi on parle.

 

*

 

D’emblée, notons que le rapport d’Onfray à la psychanalyse est… psychanalytique. Il l’avoue, sans faire de chichi : pour lui, Freud, c’est important. Le petit Michel, voyez-vous, a subi l’orphelinat (avec prêtre pédophile en option gratuite et automatique, d’après ce qu’il dit – d’où, sans doute, sa rage antichrétienne).

Trois auteurs l’aident à s’évader de cet « enfer » : Marx, Nietzsche, Freud. Alors soyons clair : il est évident que pour Onfray, flinguer Freud est une manière de liquider ce qu’il y a de psychanalytique dans sa propre pensée. Onfray réglant ses comptes avec Freud, c’est un peu l’intello français anticatholique de base faisant un choix. Nietzsche, et pas Freud (2). Avec la répudiation discrète de Marx, auquel il dit maintenant préférer Proudhon, Onfray achève de définir une identité idéologique. Une quête identitaire qui, visiblement, nourrit depuis pas mal de temps la démarche de cet intello français typique, perpétuellement à la recherche de maîtres. Des maîtres qu’il va idolâtrer, puis brûler – et bien sûr il faut qu’il les idolâtre, pour ensuite les brûler.

Très classique, tout ça : quand on analyse le parcours de nos intellos, on trouve souvent, très souvent, un traumatisme dans l’enfance, au départ de ce qui va devenir leur « raison », et qui est, d’abord, la rationalisation de leur sensibilité. Celle d’Onfray est caractérisée par un très fort individualisme (doublé d’un hédonisme revendiqué), une volonté d’indépendance intellectuelle farouche (d’où l’appétit de rupture avec toute « classe sacerdotale ») et, d’une manière générale, un enfermement non su dans les catégories modernes. Vraiment, une caricature d’intellectuel français. Ce que les héritiers des Lumières françaises, imprégnés malgré eux d’une culture catholique détestée mais intériorisée, et en outre un tantinet enfermés dans leur narcissisme intellocrate par l’héritage de mai 68, peuvent comprendre de Nietzsche : voilà, en gros, la  pensée d’Onfray.

Le côté positif du personnage est sa capacité à produire une pensée iconoclaste. Onfray déboulonnant une idole, c’est logique, c’est dans la nature du bonhomme.

Or donc, le jour est venu où, ayant fini de déboulonner « l’idole » judéo-chrétienne, notre intello français s’avisa qu’il convenait à présent de déboulonner une idole juive, ou réputée telle. Et notre intello, donc, s’attaqua au bon docteur Sigmund…

C’est là que les ennuis du philosophe commencèrent, mais c’est aussi là qu’il devint vraiment iconoclaste – puisque, par les temps qui courent, on obtient son diplôme d’hérétique en attaquant la psychanalyse, et certes pas en décochant un coup de pied rageur au catholicisme européen, ce corps immense et moribond.

Cette inscription dans la catégorie des hérétiques du moment vaudra à Onfray de figurer parmi les auteurs commentés sur ce modeste blog – ce sera notre humble contribution à son excommunication par les cléricatures dominantes.

 

*

 

Onfray analyse l’œuvre de Freud comme un travail avant tout autobiographique. En gros, il ne nie pas que les constats du bon docteur aient été justes le concernant, lui, personnellement. Il nie que ces constats soient vrais pour l’ensemble de l’humanité. Pour Onfray, Freud n’est pas un scientifique : c’est un philosophe à la rigueur. Et, en outre, un philosophe de seconde zone.

Démonstration.

Freud a menti sur sa biographie, ou en tout cas, disons qu’il l’a fortement arrangée. Pourquoi ? Parce que, nous dit Onfray, il éprouvait un besoin pathologique qu’on parle de lui en bien. Il ne supportait pas la critique. Et Onfray, ici, de suggérer que le bon docteur, toute sa vie, a cherché à donner de lui-même une image conforme à celle que sa mère se faisait de lui (la dénonciation du rôle de la mère juive n’est pas loin, mais Onfray s’arrange pour frôler le précipice sans y tomber). Exemple caricatural : Freud est cocaïnomane, donc la cocaïne permet de guérir certaines pathologies – voilà la méthode freudienne.

Pour dissimuler les conditions dans lesquelles il a bâti son système, Freud, à 29 ans, a brûlé tous ses papiers. Objectif selon Onfray : présenter la psychanalyse comme un « coup de génie », nier qu’elle soit le résultat d’une démarche à la scientificité douteuse.

D’où encore, selon Onfray, la volonté de Freud de « détruire Nietzsche » : il s’agit avant tout de dissimuler que la psychanalyse est née dans le contexte intellectuel créé par Nietzsche (un meurtre du père, en somme !). Idem pour Schopenhauer : si Freud l’a rejeté, c’est pour ne pas avouer que sa théorie du refoulement n’est qu’une resucée du « monde comme volonté et comme représentation ». Idem, au fond, pour toute la philosophie : Freud prétend s’en être détourné à cause de son caractère « abstrait » : en réalité, ce qu’il veut cacher, c’est le caractère abstrait de son œuvre à lui.

Pourquoi cette imposture ? Parce que Freud est un aventurier, obligé de dissimuler qu’il est un aventurier. La thèse d’Onfray a le mérite de la clarté : Freud ne veut pas la vérité scientifique, il veut les honneurs, l’argent, la célébrité. Mais pour avoir les honneurs, l’argent, la célébrité, il doit prétendre avoir découvert une vérité scientifique qu’il a longuement cherchée (l’inconscient), et trouvée à l’issue de travaux très sérieux. Cette vérité, en réalité, était déjà toute entière dans Nietzsche (la volonté de puissance), Schopenhauer (le vouloir vivre), et quelques autres (l’inconscient de Hartmann, et même, déjà, le conatus de Spinoza). Simplement, Freud l’habille d’un vernis de fausse scientificité, pour la revendre au meilleur prix. Si, au passage, il faut assassiner la philosophie, nier qu’elle possède une valeur spécifique, pour tout ramener à une catégorie naissante des « sciences humaines », tant mieux : une main lavera l’autre, la destruction de la filiation permettra de cautionner l’imposture. Freud est un médiocre philosophe, qui se déguise en grand médecin. Et donc, la psychanalyse n’est pas une science, c’est la philosophie d’un petit philosophe.

Après cette première salve d’artillerie à longue portée, Onfray part à l’assaut pour l’attaque à la baïonnette. Et là, c’est du corps à corps, on achève le blessé au couteau de tranchée.

La philosophie de Freud se résume, nous dit Onfray, à une banale pathologie de la relation au père, à la fois humilié (donc castré) et humiliant (donc castrateur). Le complexe d’Œdipe n’est pas une vérité universelle, mais tout simplement une pathologie spécifique à la famille du petit Sigmund, qui prend son cas pour une généralité. On nage, chez Freud, dans l’autobiographie vaguement hystérique d’un adulte qui n’est jamais parvenu à échapper à une mère fusionnelle, qui n’a pas pu construire son identité sexuelle normalement (collision des générations dans la famille), et qui, pour se dissimuler qu’il est un fils à maman, va présenter sa pathologie comme une règle générale. Onfray consacre une centaine de page à l’analyse des pathologies freudiennes ; un ami à moi, menuisier de son état, sait très bien résumer ça en une phrase définitive : ça sent le slip de pédé.

Toute la pensée de Freud, nous explique Onfray, tourne autour de sa pathologie propre. Il veut tuer Moïse, créateur de la religion où il fut élevé, parce que Moïse est assimilé à la figure paternelle (Freud interdit à sa femme, fille de rabbin, d’élever leurs enfants dans la religion). Il déteste le président Wilson au seul motif que celui-ci a pris son père en modèle. Il y a, chez Freud, une rage anti-patriarcale qui a plus à voir avec la névrose qu’avec la méthode scientifique.

Voilà, à très grands traits et sans entrer dans les détails, la théorie d’Onfray sur Freud. C’est un carnage.

 

*

 

La théorie est étayée par une analyse approfondie des méthodes du bon docteur Sigmund. Où l’on apprend en vrac :

-          Que Freud s’est vanté de guérisons imaginaires, les patients en cause ayant généralement fait des rechutes (limite de l’effet placebo),

-          Qu’il a lui-même présenté sa théorie du « père de la horde originaire » comme un « mythe scientifique » (soit un aveu du caractère non-scientifique de la théorie),

-          Qu’il a lui-même présenté la psychanalyse comme l’incarnation de « l’esprit du nouveau judaïsme », c'est-à-dire non comme une science, mais comme une religion qui se substitue à une autre religion (ici, Onfray fait une remarque inattendue et intéressante : Freud aurait-il été ami de l’Egypte, et ennemi de Moïse, précisément parce que la terre des Pharaons fut une des rares civilisations connues pour pratiquer l’inceste à grande échelle ? – Onfray va jusqu’à parler d’un antisémitisme latent chez Freud, au-delà d’un antijudaïsme évident),

-          Que les patients de Freud et de certains de ses disciples immédiats ont une fâcheuse tendance à se suicider après quelques années d’analyse (dont, entre autres, Marilyn Monroe, qui, en léguant une partie de sa fortune à la Fondation Anna Freud, a beaucoup fait pour les finances de la secte),

-          Que le bon docteur a beaucoup écrit sous l’emprise de la cocaïne, ce qui, on l’admettra, n’est pas franchement un gage d’objectivité scientifique (au passage, on peut remarquer que Freud a si bien soigné un patient à grands coups de cocaïne par injection… que ledit patient en est mort !),

-          Que Freud annonça avoir renoncé à l’hypnose à cause de son caractère « mystique », mais que ce renoncement arriva comme par hasard après qu’il se fut avéré qu’il était mauvais hypnotiseur,

-          Qu’il a ouvertement reconnu avoir abandonné la balnéothérapie parce qu’elle n’était pas rentable financièrement,

-          Etc. etc.

Plus intéressant que ce dossier à charge lourd mais anecdotique au regard des enjeux réels, Onfray attaque le freudisme, et pas seulement Freud. Et bien sûr, c’est là qu’est le vrai débat : au fond, que le bon docteur n’ait été qu’un charlatan n’a aucune importance ; ce qui est important, c’est de savoir si l’impact de sa pensée est positif ou négatif. Un charlatan médical peut très bien être un philosophe de grande portée ; est-ce le cas de Freud ?

Onfray accuse Freud d’avoir plongé l’esprit occidental dans un rapport magique au monde. Sa philosophie est caractérisée par une dénégation inconsciente du corps, dont le primat accordé au psychisme n’est que le masque. Ce déni du corps traduit, en profondeur, un refus de l’incertitude, une volonté obstinée de ne pas concéder à l’humain sa part de mystère : l’inconscient freudien est une pure abstraction, qui se révèle par des phénomènes que l’existence de cette abstraction permet de relier arbitrairement. Le discours freudien est donc celui d’une reconstitution artificielle d’un monde parallèle, où le pouvoir du mage transcende les limites de la connaissance humaine. C’est une pensée magique, et, plus grave, c’est le point de départ d’un univers sectaire : le monde freudien, déconnecté du réel, fournit en réalité un placebo à des malades eux-mêmes atteints d’une semblable déconnexion. Le psychanalyste ne guérit pas, il cautionne la maladie, il la rend acceptable par son patient. Fondamentalement, c’est de la magie noire.

Cette magie, explique Onfray, est dangereuse parce qu’elle repose sur un ensemble de mythes agissants. Si vous vivez dans un monde où l’on vous dit que tout est sexe, au bout d’un moment, dans votre esprit, tout sera effectivement sexe (surtout si ce discours vous libère d’un puritanisme étouffant). Si vous vivez dans un monde où l’on analyse toute relation comme perverse, alors toute relation deviendra effectivement perverse (surtout si vous vivez dans un monde dont les  structures socio-économiques sont réellement perverses). Et si en plus, vous vivez dans un monde où les tenants des thèses en question pratiquent l’intimidation à l’égard de quiconque ne partage pas leurs certitudes, vos réflexes d’obédience viendront renforcer l’impact pathogène du discours sectaire dans lequel votre société est enfermée. Ne perdons pas de vue qu’à travers le Comité Secret de la Société psychologique et ses ramifications à travers toute l’Europe, la psychanalyse s’est, très tôt, organisée comme une franc-maçonnerie particulièrement sectaire, dont les affidés chassaient en meute – d’où la dictature intellectuelle des milieux freudiens dans les intelligentsias.

Sous cet angle, on sort de la lecture d’Onfray avec en tête une hypothèse : Freud se rattache peut-être à la catégorie des faiseurs « d’horribles miracles », pour parler comme René Girard – il crée une peste, la répand dans la société en jouant sur les mimétismes, et se vante ensuite de pouvoir guérir du mal qu’il a lui-même créé. C’est en effet ainsi, explique Girard dans « Je vois Satan tomber comme l’éclair », que procédaient les thaumaturges du paganisme tardif – dans les catégories chrétiennes, Freud serait donc un faux prophète, un antéchrist.

Qu’Onfray n’ait pas anticipé la formulation de cette hypothèse, parmi les réactions possibles de son lecteur, se laisse bien voir à la dernière partie de son livre, où il nous présente le Freud « réactionnaire » – rappelons ici que Freud réaffirme, à travers la théorie de la sublimation, un interdit de l’inceste (fût-ce pour y voir la source de toutes les névroses). Et, à juste titre, Onfray nous fait remarquer que cette manière de poser le problème débouche, mécaniquement, sur une vision du monde très noire : rares seront les hommes heureux, car rares seront les hommes qui sauront accorder leurs désirs et leurs possibilités, donc la règle est la compétition pour le peu de bonheur disponible, presque un concours de bites, au fond, et que le meilleur gagne ! (sous cet angle il est évident que le freudisme est en partie une idéologie bourgeoise, voire un proto-fascisme, et en tout cas un nihilisme).

Et cependant, on sort de cette cinquième partie avec un sentiment d’inachevé…

En fait, Onfray passe à côté de la conclusion qui aurait dû couronner sa charge. On soupçonne ici que, pour dire les choses simplement, l’intello d’Argentan ne s’est jamais remis de son passage chez les curés (pédophiles d’après lui, et qui en outre lui auraient interdit de se branler). Résultat : chez Onfray, il manque l’essentiel.

Onfray ne peut condamner l’instrumentalisation du désir qu’au nom du désir, parce qu’il ignore, ou en tout cas néglige, la notion d’Amitié (au sens aristotélicien). C’est pourquoi, à ses yeux, il ne peut y avoir que deux camps : ceux qui veulent réprimer le désir (où il range Freud), et ceux qui veulent le libérer (où il se range). Puisque Freud décourage les hédonistes, c’est que Freud est un réac : voilà la conclusion d’Onfray – qui montre ici les limites de son positionnement, et passe donc complètement à côté de la question où, pourtant, son travail aurait dû l’amener : est-ce que le fond du problème, chez Freud, ce ne serait pas tout simplement une certaine incapacité à aimer ? A s’oublier soi-même ? Et si, pour sortir de la névrose, il ne fallait tout simplement admettre que l’on doit s’occuper d’autre chose que de soi ?

Autant de questions qu’Onfray, profondément individualiste, irréductiblement moderne, ne peut pas poser, parce qu’il ne peut pas les penser. Pour Onfray, le monde se réduit à un face-à-face entre phallocratie et libération sexuelle : il n’a pas remarqué que ce ne sont là, fondamentalement, que deux figures possibles d’une même réduction de l’Agapè à l’Eros. En quoi, et il l’avoue d’ailleurs à demi-mots dans sa conclusion, Onfray ne peut pas, à ce stade, se libérer vraiment de l’emprise de Freud…

( 1 ) Les lecteurs désireux de se détendre pourront se régaler de ce morceau de bravoure, offert par un « psy » tellement caricatural qu’on a peine à croire au premier degré : voici l’impossible remix de « Freud est grand et je suis son prophète » sur un sampling d’Offenbach, la vie parisienne, « Yé choui bréjilien y’ai dé l’or » (ne pas manquer).

( 2 ) Sur le sous-nietzschéisme d'Onfray, à lire très bientôt sur ce blog un résumé de la critique de Nietzsche par Lukacs. Qu'il soit bien entendu que cette note de lecture ne vaut pas approbation de la position d'Onfray dans l'absolu.

 

Last Encounter with Carl Jung

Miguel SERRANO

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated by Alex Kurtagić

Author’s Note:

This is a translation of the article by Serrano published by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio in 1961, following Carl Jung’s death.

It’s six in the morning, 8 June. I open the doors to my room in New Delhi—doors which open to a small white terrace, already fulgurating with sunlight. The tremendous June heat starts early in the day. I am partially naked, and in a moment I will begin my yogic exercises of sun adoration, “Suryanamaskar.” The trees’ incredible verdure, even in this weather, and the birdsong of infinity, greet me. A servant, who is from around these parts, approaches me with that measured step of the Indians and says to me, “Salam, Sahib.” It’s his respectful greeting. He hands me a piece of paper. It’s a telegram. I open it without hurry, almost absent-mindedly. I see that it comes from Zurich and it surprises me that this is the case. I begin reading and I am perplexed. The telegram reads as follows: “Dr. Jung died peacefully yesterday at noon. Best wishes.” It is signed by Beiley and Jaffe: the young lady that kept him company, who walked him home—an extraordinary woman—; and his private secretary, a Swiss citizen.

A great sadness immobilizes me right there—my eyes are moist, perhaps because of the intense sun, or perhaps not. It was so recently that I had been with Dr. Jung, at his house in Küsnacht, next to Lake Zurich. I might have been the last foreign friend to see him. The news has hit me in the depths of my soul. I have had the enormous fortune of having been prefaced by Jung—that, having been the first and last time that he penned a preface for a purely literary work.

I received a letter from him at the time of our last year’s earthquakes in Chile. He said, “Even if modern men of science will not accept it, there is a relationship between Nature and the soul. Mother Nature now attunes itself to our civilization and begins also to visit destruction. Unfortunately, it has been your country’s turn this time. I have thought of Chile so much lately!”

The remembrance flies, I see its image, it’s on my mind. So very recently I arrived at his house, amid a fine rain. Jung’s house is in the outskirts of Zurich, in Künsnacht. At the entrance’s portal there is a phrase in Latin that reads, more or less, “Think or not in God. He is always present.” Inside there are paintings and beautiful objects, antique engravings, mediaeval paintings. I was received by Ms. Beiley, who invited me into a small living room, where she served us tea.

We talked about Dr. Jung. She told that me he had not been well during the last few days, feeling very tired as a result of working intensively on a 80-page essay he had written in longhand, as usual, directly in English for an American publication, and due to appear soon with the title “Man and his Myths.” Ms. Beiley is very worried, as Jung has said to her, “I wish to go, but you tie me here.” She does not believe him, as she thinks that Dr. Jung is still interested in life and the Earth. He has told me that “to die is also to go to Jung’s collective Unconscious, only to then, from there, go back to the realm of forms, of forms . . .” Hesse has also told me that “Jung is a giant, a giant mountain in our time.” And he has asked me to forward Jung his greetings—“the steppe wolf’s greetings,” he has said.

Jung has been unwell, it is true, but he’s afflicted by no illness. That day he had felt better  and even got up to receive me. Ms. Beiley asks that we go upstairs, but also that I don’t stay long so as not to tire him. We entered his study. And there was Jung, on a chair, next to the window facing the lake. He’s wearing a Japanese robe that makes him look like a Zen Buddhist monk, an old samurai, or a magus from earlier times. He is haloed by a crepuscular light, and he is surrounded by alchemical engravings and a great paining of the Hindu god Shiva on the summit of Mount Kailash.

He smiles with that smile of his, filled with cunning, wisdom, and benevolence. He reaches for his pipe, but fails. I tell him, “What a beautiful Japanese robe.” It is a ceremonial robe. Out of my pocket I take box from Kashmir that I have brought him as a present. He looks at it and says, “It’s made out of turquoise.” And then he adds, “I’ve never been to Kashmir. I traversed the South of India; Madora—all those very ‘interesting’ places.” He then talks to me about the Hindus and the Chinese; he makes reference to a book by a Chinese master of Zen Buddism, whose name I can’t remember now, and he tells me that it is the best he has read on the subject. I transmit Hermann Hesse’s greetings and I relate my conversation with that writer about death. I explain that I have asked him whether it is important to know that there is something beyond death. Jung meditates for a while and states that the question has been posted incorrectly—that I should have asked whether there is reason to believe that there is something beyond death.

I now ask Dr. Jung, “And what do you believe? Is there?” He answers, “if the human mind can operate independently of the brain, then it operates independently of space and time. And if it operates independently of space and time, it is incorruptible.”

And what do you believe, Dr. Jung? What do you think?

I have seen men wounded by bullets to the brain during the war who have a lost all brain function and who nevertheless have dreams and are able to remember them afterwards. What is it they dream? There are small children, who don’t yet have a defined self, whose consciousness is diffuse and spread over their bodies, yet who have deep and personal dreams that mark them for the rest of their lives. There is no self there. What is that other they dream?

Do you believe, Dr. Jung, that there exists something like a subtle body, an astral body, the “Linga-Sarira” of Hindu philosophy, which detaches itself upon death?

I don’t know. I have seen objects materialize and mediums move objects from afar without touching them with their physical bodies.

And Dr. Jung continues:

Sometime ago I was very ill, almost in a coma; everybody thought that I would die and maybe even that I was suffering greatly, because in this condition one’s body makes people believe that one is suffering. But in reality I felt as if I were floating and experienced a marvelous sense of freedom. I remembered it afterwards.

Dr. Jung always wore on his right hand a ring with a Gnostic gem. An Egyptian gem. We spoke about the meaning of that ring, and he explained, “All these symbols are alive in me.” His memory and culture, even at the age of 85, was incredible.

At times he spoke like a poet, like a magus, like a mystic. One time he said to me, “My message is not wholly understood; only poets understand it.”

Now I ask him:

What will happen to mankind in the coming technological supercivilization? Do you think that, in twenty years, anyone will care about the spirit of symbols, in the midst of the era of interplanetary journeys, with the Sputniks, the Gagarins, and the Shephards? Will not the spirit come to appear passé?

Dr. Jung smiles cunningly and states:

Sooner or later man will have to return to himself, even if from the stars. All this that is happening now is an extreme form of escapism, because it is easier to reach Mars than to find oneself. If man doesn’t find himself, then he faces the greatest of dangers: his own annihilation. On journeys into outer space there is also an unconscious attempt to solve the gravest of all problems that man will have to face in the future: overpopulation.

Dr. Jung was going to continue talking about this very important topic when Ms. Beiley entered the room to say that Dr. Jung’s daughter and son-in-law were waiting. I had not fulfilled my promise of a brief conversation.

But now I know it doesn’t matter, because mine was to be his last interview. And something perhaps told me that this was the case, for when I reached the door I stopped and turned my head. Jung sat there staring at me, with a soft smile and lifting his hand in a gesture of farewell. His last one. The hand with the Gnostic ring. I bowed, respectfully.

Source: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/news251020101138...

La psico-antropologia de L. F. Clauss

LA PSICO-ANTROPOLOGÍA DE L.F. CLAUSS:

UNA ALTERNATIVA FRUSTRADA

Sebastian J. Lorenz

 

Ex: http://imperium-revolucion-conservadora.blogspot.com/

Frente al concepto materialista de la antropología nórdica, que consideraba la raza como un conjunto de factores físicos y psíquicos, se fue haciendo paso una antropologíade tipo espiritual, que tendrá su máximo exponente en el fundador de la “psico-raciología” (Rassenseelenkunde) Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss. Frente a la preeminencia de los rasgos fisiológicos, a los que se ligaba unas características intelectuales, Clauss inaugurará la “ley del estilo” . Para él, la adscripción a una etnia es, fundamentalmente, un estilo que se manifiesta en una multiplicidad de caracteres, ya sean de tipo físico, psíquico o anímico que, conjuntamente, expresan un determinado estilo dinámico: «por el movimiento del cuerpo, su expresión, su respuesta a los estímulos exteriores de toda clase, el proceso anímico que ha conducido a este movimiento se convierte en una expresión del espacio, el cuerpo se convierte en campo de expresión del alma» (Rasse und Seele).

Robert Steuckers ha escrito que «la originalidad de su método de investigación raciológica consistió en la renuncia a los zoologismos de las teorías raciales convencionales, nacidas de la herencia del darwinismo, en las que al hombre se le considera un simple animal más evolucionado que el resto». Desde esta perspectiva, Clauss consideraba en un nivel superior las dimensiones psíquica y espiritual frente a las características somáticas o biológicas.

Así, la raciología natural y materialista se fijaba exclusivamente en los caracteres externos –forma del cráneo, pigmentación de la piel, color de ojos y cabello, etc-, sin reparar que lo que da forma a dichos rasgos es el estilo del individuo. «Una raza no es un montón de propiedades o rasgos, sino un estilo de vida que abarca la totalidad de una forma viviente», por lo que Clauss define la raza «como un conjunto de propiedades internas, estilo típico y genio, que configuran a cada individuo y que se manifiestan en cada uno y en todos los que forman la población étnica». Para él, la forma del cuerpo y los rasgos físicos no son sino la expresión material de una realidad interna: tanto el espíritu (Geist) como el sentido psíquico (Seele) son los factores esenciales que modelan las formas corpóreas exteriores. Así, en lo relativo a la raza nórdica, no es que al tipo alto, fuerte, dolicocéfalo, rubio y de ojos azules, le correspondan una serie de caracteres morales e intelectuales, sino que es a un determinado estilo, el del “hombre de acción”, el hombre creativo (Leistungsmensch), al que se deben aquellos rasgos físicos, conjunto que parece predestinar a un grupo determinado de hombres. La etnia aparece concebida, de esta forma, como una unidad físico-anímica hereditaria, en la que el cuerpo es la “expresión del alma”. Klages dirá que «el alma es el sentido del cuerpo y el cuerpo es la manifestación del alma».

La escuela “espiritualista” fundada por Clauss tuvo, ciertamente, una buena acogida por parte de sus lectores, que se vieron liberados de las descripciones antropológicas del tipo ideal de hombre nórdico, las cuales no concurrían en buena parte de la población alemana, reconduciendo, de esta forma, el estilo de la raza a criterios idealistas menos discriminatorios. Pero lo que, en el fondo, estaba proponiendo Clauss, no era una huida del racismo materialista sino, precisamente, un reforzamiento de éste a través de su paralelismo anímico, según la fórmula “a una raza noble, le corresponde un espíritu noble”. Distintos caminos para llegar al mismo sitio. Así, podrá decir que «las razas no se diferencian tanto por los rasgos o facultades que poseen, sino por el estilo con que éstas se presentan», esto es, que no se distinguen por sus cualidades, sino por el estilo innato a las mismas. Entonces, basta conceder un “estilo arquitectónico” a la mujer nórdica, a la que atribuye un orden metódico tanto corporal como espiritual, frente a la mujer africana que carece de los mismos, para llegar a las mismas conclusiones que los teóricos del racismo bio-antropológico.

Por todo ello, las ideas de Clauss no dejan de encuadrarse en el “nordicismo” más radical de la época. El hombre nórdico es un tipo cuya actuación siempre está dirigida por el esfuerzo y por el rendimiento, por el deseo y por la consecución de una obra. «En todas las manifestaciones de actividad del hombre nórdico hay un objetivo: está dirigido desde el interior hacia el exterior, escogiendo algún motivo y emprendiéndolo, porque es muy activo. La vida le ordena luchar en primera línea y a cualquier precio, aun el de perecer. Las manifestaciones de esta clase son, pues una forma de heroísmo, aunque distinto del “heroísmo bélico”». De ahí a afirmar que los pueblos de sangre nórdica se han distinguido siempre de los demás por su audacia, sus conquistas y descubrimientos, por una fuerza de empuje que les impide acomodarse, y que han marcado a toda la humanidad con el estilo de su raza, sólo había un paso que Clauss estaba dispuesto a dar.

El estilo de las otras razas, sin embargo, no sale tan bien parado. Del hombre fálico destaca su interioridad y la fidelidad por las raíces que definen al campesinado alemán (deutsche treue), puesto que la raza fálica se encuentra profundamente imbricada dentro de la nórdica. Respecto a la cultura y raza latina (Westisch) dirá que no es patrimonio exclusivo del hombre mediterráneo, sino producto de la combinación entre la viveza, la sensualidad gestual y la agilidad mental de éste con la creatividad del tipo nórdico, derivada de la productiva fertilización que los pueblos de origen indogermánico introdujeron en el sur de Europa (Rasse und Charakter).

De los tipos alpino (dunkel-ostisch) y báltico-oriental (hell-ostisch), braquimorfos y braquicéfalos, dirá que son el extremo opuesto del nórdico, tanto en sus formas corporales como en las espirituales, porque son capaces de soportar el sufrimiento y la muerte de forma indiferente, sin ningún tipo de heroísmo, pero su falta de imaginación los hace inútiles para las grandes ideas y pensamientos, en definitiva, el hombre evasivo y servicial. Curiosamente, el estudio que hace de la raza semítico-oriental –judía y árabe-, con las que se hallaba bastante involucrado personalmente, no resulta tan peyorativo, si bien coincidía con Hans F.K. Günther en que existe entre los hebreos un conflicto entre el espíritu y la carne que acaba con la victoria de esta última, con la “redención por la carne”, mientras que de los árabes destaca su fatalismo y la inspiración divina que les hace creer –como iluminados- que son los escogidos o los enviados de Dios.

Por lo demás, Clauss admitió que los diferentes estilos, al igual que sucede con los tipos étnicos, se entrecruzan y están presentes simultáneamente en cada individuo. Según Evola, «para él, dada la actual mezcla de tipos, también en materia de “razas del alma”, en lo relativo a un pueblo moderno, la raza es objeto menos de una constatación que de una “decisión”: hay que decidirse, en el sentido de seleccionar y elegir a aquel que, entre los diferentes influjos físico-espirituales presentes simultáneamente en uno mismo, a aquel que más se ha manifestado creativo en la tradición de aquel pueblo; y hacer en modo tal que, entonces una tal influencia o “raza del alma” tome la primacía sobre cualquier otra.»

No obstante lo anterior, el nordicismo ideal y espiritual de Clauss fracasó estrepitosamente porque nunca pudo superar la popularidad que tuvo el tipo ideal de hombre nórdico que Hans F.K. Günther proponía recuperar a través de los representantes más puros de la cepa germánica, si bien no como realidad, sino como una aspiración ideal, de tal forma que, finalmente, Clauss se vio apartado de todas las organizaciones del tejido nacionalsocialista a las que, desde un principio, había pertenecido.

Jack Malebranche’s Androphilia: A Manifesto

Derek Hawthorne

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Jack Malebranche (Jack Donovan)
Androphilia: A Manifesto
Baltimore, Md.: Scapegoat Publishing, 2006

Near the end of Androphilia, Jack Donovan writes “It has always seemed like some profoundly ironic cosmic joke to me that the culture of men who love men is a culture that deifies women and celebrates effeminacy. Wouldn’t it make more sense if the culture of men who are sexually fascinated by men actually idolized men and celebrated masculinity?” (p. 115).

He has a point there. As Donovan notes, homosexual porn is almost exclusively focused on hypermasculine archetypes: the lumberjack, the marine, the jock, the cop, etc. (I am going to employ the term “homosexual,” despite its problematic history, as a neutral term to denote same-sex desire among men. I am avoiding the term “gay,” for reasons that will soon be apparent.) So why are homosexuals, who worship masculine men, so damn queeny? Most straight men (and women too) would offer what they see as the obvious answer: homosexuals are not real men. They are a sort of strange breed of womanly man, and it is precisely the otherness of masculine men that attracts them so. This is, after all, the way things work with straight people: men are attracted to women, and vice versa, because they are other. We want what we are not. Therefore, if a man desires another man then he must not be a real man.

What makes this theory so plausible is that so many self-identified homosexuals do behave in the most excruciatingly effeminate manner. They certainly seem to be not-quite-men. Donovan thinks (and I believe he is correct) that it is this womanish behavior in homosexuals that bothers straight men so much – more so, actually, than the fact that homosexuals have sex with other men in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Donovan objects to effeminacy in homosexuals as well, but he sees this effeminacy as a socially-constructed behavior pattern; as a consequence of the flawed logic that claims “since we’re attracted to what’s other, if you’re a man attracted to a man you must not be a real man.” Having bought into this way of seeing things, the “gay community” actually encourages its members to “camp it up” and get in touch with their feminine side. They think they are liberating themselves, but what they don’t see is that they have bought into a specific set of cultural assumptions which effectively rob them of their manhood, in their own eyes and in the eyes of society.

Donovan argues, plausibly, that homosexual attraction should be seen as a “variation in desire” among men (p. 21). Homosexuals are men — men who happen to be attracted to other men. Their sexual desire does not make them into a separate species of quasi-men. This is a point that will be resisted by many, but it is easily defended. One can see this simply by reflecting on how difficult it is to comprehend the homosexuals of yore in the terms we use today to deal with these matters. There was, after all, unlikely to have been anything “queeny” (and certainly not cowardly) about the Spartan 300, who were 150 homosexual couples. And the samurai in feudal Japan were doing it too — just to mention two examples. These are not the sort of people one thinks of as “sensitive” and who one would expect to show up at a Lady Gaga concert, were they around today. It is unlikely that Achilles and his “favorite” Patroclus would have cruised around with a rainbow flag flying from their chariot. These were manly men, who happened to sexually desire other men. If there can be such men, then there is no necessary disjunction between homosexuality and masculinity. QED.

In essential terms, what Donovan argues in Androphilia is that homosexuals should reject the “gay culture” of effeminacy and reclaim masculinity for themselves. Ironically, gay culture is really the product of an internalization of the Judeo-Christian demonization of same-sex desire, and its insistence that homosexuality and masculinity are incompatible. Donovan wants gays to become “androphiles”: men who love men, but who are not defined by that love. “Gay men” are men who allow themselves to be defined entirely by their desire, defined into a separate segment of humanity that talks alike, walks alike, dresses alike, thinks alike, votes alike, and has set itself apart from “breeders” in fashionable urban ghettos. “Gay” really denotes a whole way of life “that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics” (p. 18). (This is the reason Donovan often uses “homo” instead of “gay”: gay is a package deal denoting much more than same-sex desire.) He argues that in an effort to promote acceptance of men with same-sex desire, homosexuals encouraged others to regard them as, in effect, a separate sex — really, almost a separate race. “Gay,” Donovan remarks, is really “sexuality as ethnicity” (p. 18). As a result, gay men have cut themselves off from the fraternity of men and, arguably, trapped themselves in a lifestyle that stunts them into perpetual adolescence. Donovan asks, reasonably, “Why should I identify more closely with a lesbian folk singer than with [straight] men my age who share my interests?”

Many of those who have made it this far into my review might conclude now that Androphilia is really a book for homosexuals, and doesn’t have much to say to the rest of the world. But this is not the case. Donovan’s book contains profound reflections on sexuality and its historical construction (yes, there really are some things that are historically constructed), the nature of masculinity, the role of male bonding in the formation of culture, and the connection between masculinity and politics. This book has implications for how men — all men — understand themselves.

Donovan attacks head-on the attempt by gays to set themselves up as an “oppressed group” on the model of blacks and women, and to compel all of us to refrain from uttering a critical word about them. He attacks feminism as the anti-male ideology it is. And he zeroes in on the connection, taken for granted by nearly everyone, between gay culture and advocacy of left-wing causes. Androphilia, in short, is a book that belongs squarely on the political right. It should be no surprise to anyone to discover that Donovan has been busy since the publication of Androphilia writing for sites like Alternative Right and Spearhead.

Donovan himself was a part of the gay community when he was younger, but never really felt like he belonged. He so much as tells us that his desire for men is his religion; that he worships masculinity in men. But it seemed natural to Donovan that since he was a man, he should cultivate in himself the very qualities he admired in others. His desire was decidedly not for an “other” but for the very qualities that he saw, proudly, in himself. (He says at one point, “I experience androphilia not as an attraction to some alien opposite, but as an attraction to variations in sameness,” p. 49).

Donovan is certainly not alone. It’s natural when we think of homosexuals to visualize effeminate men, because those are the ones that stand out. If I asked you to visualize a Swede you’d probably conjure up a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic exemplar. But, of course, a great many Swedes are brunettes (famous ones, too; e.g., Ingmar Bergman). The effeminate types are merely the most conspicuous homosexuals. But there also exists a silent multitude of masculine men who love men, men whom no one typically pegs as “gay.” These men are often referred to as “straight acting” — as if masculinity in a homosexual is necessarily some kind of act. These men are really Donovan’s target audience, and they live a tragic predicament. They are masculine men who see their own masculinity as a virtue, thus they cannot identify with what Donovan calls the Gay Party (i.e., “gay community”) and its celebration of effeminacy. They identify far more closely with straight men, who, of course, will not fully accept them. This is partly due to fear (“is he going to make a pass at me?”), and partly, again, due to the prevailing view which equates same-sex desire with lack of manliness. The Jack Donovans out there are lost between two worlds, at home in neither. Loneliness and sexual desire compels such men to live on the periphery of the gay community, hoping always to find someone like themselves. If they have at all internalized the message that their desires make them less-than-men (and most have), then their relationship to masculinity will always be a problematic one. They will always have “something to prove,” and always fear, deep down, that perhaps they are inadequate in some fundamental way.

Androphilia is therapy for such men, and a call for them to form a new identity and group solidarity quite independent of the “gay community.” On the one hand, Donovan asserts that, again, homosexuality should be seen as a “variation in desire” among men; that homosexuals should see themselves as men first, and not be defined entirely by their same-sex desire. On the other hand, it is very clear that Donovan also has high hopes that self-identified androphiles will become a force to be reckoned with. He writes at one point, “While other men struggle to keep food on the table or get new sneakers for Junior, androphiles can use their extra income to fund their endeavors. This is a significant advantage. Androphiles could become leaders of men in virtually any field with comparative ease. By holding personal achievement in high esteem, androphiles could become more than men; they could become great men” (p. 88).

Is Jack Donovan — the androphile Tyler Durden — building an army? Actually, it looks more like he’s building a religion, and this brings us to one of the most interesting aspects of Androphilia. Repeatedly, Donovan tells us that “masculinity is a religion,” or words to that effect (see especially pp. 65, 72, 76, 80, 116).

A first step to understanding what he is talking about is to recognize that masculinity is an ideal, and a virtue. Men strive to cultivate masculinity in themselves, and they admire it in other men. Further, masculinity is something that has to be achieved. Better yet, it has to be won. Femininity, on the other hand, is quite different. Femininity is essentially a state of being that simply comes with being female; it is not an accomplishment. Women are, but men must become. If femininity has anything to do with achievement, the achievement usually consists in artifice: dressing in a certain manner, putting on makeup, learning how to be coy, etc. Femininity is almost exclusively bound up with being attractive to men. If a man’s “masculinity” consisted in dressing butch and not shaving, he would be laughed at; his “masculinity” would be essentially effeminate. (Such is the masculinity, for example, of gay “bears” and “leatherman.”) Similarly, if a man’s “masculinity” consists entirely in pursuing women and making himself attractive to them, he is scorned by other men. (Ironically, such “gigolos” are often far more effeminate mama’s boys than many homosexuals.) No, true masculinity is achieved by accomplishing something difficult in the world: by fighting, building something, discovering something, winning a contest, setting a record, etc. In order for it to count, a man has to overcome things like fear and opposition. He has to exhibit such virtues as bravery, perseverance, commitment, consistency, integrity, and, often, loyalty. Masculinity is inextricably tied to virtue (which is no surprise — given that the root vir-, from which we also get “virile,” means “man”). A woman can be petty, fickle, dishonest, fearful, inconstant, weak, and unserious — and still be thought of as 100% feminine.

A woman can also be the butchest nun, women’s lacrosse coach, or dominatrix on the planet and never be in any danger of someone thinking she’s “not a real woman.” With men, it’s completely different. As the example of homosexuals illustrates, it is quite possible to have a y chromosome and be branded “not a real man.” Masculinity, again, is an ideal that men are constantly striving to realize. The flip side of this is that they live in constant fear of some kind of failure that might rob them of masculinity in their eyes or the eyes of others. They must “live up” to the title of “man.” Contrary to the views of modern psychologists and feminists, this does not indicate a “problem” with men that they must somehow try to overcome. If men did not feel driven to make their mark on the world and prove themselves worthy of being called men, there would be no science, no philosophy, no art, no music, no technology, no exploration.

“But there would also be no war, no conflict, no competition!” feminists and male geldings will shriek in response. They’re right: there would be none of these things. And the world would be colorless and unutterably boring.

As Camille Paglia famously said, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” She also said “There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.” What this really means is that given the nature of men, we can’t have Mozart without Jack the Ripper. So be it.

It should now be a bit clearer why Donovan says that “masculinity is a religion.” To quote him more fully, “masculinity is not just a quality shared by many men, but also an ideal to which men collectively aspire. Masculinity is a religion, one that naturally resonates with the condition of maleness. Worship takes place at sports arenas, during action films, in adventure novels and history books, in frat houses, in hunting lodges” (p. 65).

Earlier in the book he writes: “All men appreciate masculinity in other men. They appreciate men who are manly, who embody what it means to be a man. They admire and look up to men who are powerful, accomplished or assertive. . . . Men respectfully acknowledge another man’s impressive size or build, note a fierce handshake, or take a friendly interest in his facial hair. . . . Sportscasters and fans speak lovingly of the bodies and miraculous abilities of their shared heroes. . . . While straight men would rather not discuss it because they don’t want to be perceived as latent homosexuals, they do regularly admire one another’s bodies at the gym or at sporting events” (p. 22). None of this is “gay,” “latently gay,” or “homoerotic.” This is just men admiring manliness. One of the sad consequences of “gay liberation” (and Freudian psychology) is that straight men must now police their behavior for any signs that might be read as “latency.” And gay liberation has destroyed male bonding. Just recently I re-watched Robert Rossen’s classic 1961 film The Hustler. In the opening scene, an old man watches a drunken Paul Newman playing pool and remarks to a friend, “Nice looking boy. Clean cut. Too bad he can’t hold his liquor.” No straight man today would dream of openly admiring another man’s appearance and describing him as “nice looking,” even though there need be nothing sexual in this at all.

Of course, there is something decidedly sexual in androphilia. The androphile admires masculinity in other men also, but he has a sexual response to it. An androphile may admire all the same qualities in a man that a straight man would, but the androphile gets turned on by them. Here we must note, however, that although the straight man admires masculinity in men he generally spends a lot less time reflecting on it than an androphile does. And there are innumerable qualities in men (especially physical qualities) which androphiles notice, but which many straight men are completely oblivious to. In fact, one of the characteristics of manly men is a kind of obliviousness to their own masculine attractiveness. Yes, straight men admire masculinity in other men and in themselves — but this is often not something that is brought fully to consciousness. No matter how attractive he may be, if a man is vain, his attractiveness is undercut — and so is his masculinity. Men are attractive — to women and to androphiles — to the extent that their masculinity is something natural, unselfconscious, unaffected, and seemingly effortless. Oddly, lack of self-consciousness does seem to be a masculine trait. Think of the single-minded warrior, uncorrupted by doubt and introspection, forging ahead without any thought for how he seems to others, unaware of how brightly his virtue and heroism shine.

What all this means is that androphilia is masculinity brought to self-consciousness. To put it another way, the androphile is masculinity brought to awareness of itself. It is in the androphile that all that is good and noble and beautiful in the male comes to be consciously reflected upon and affirmed. It is in androphiles like Jack Donovan that the god of masculinity is consciously thematized as a god, and worshipped. Masculinity is a religion, he tells us again and again.

Now, I said a few lines earlier that lack of self-consciousness seems to be a masculine trait. If in androphiles a greater self-consciousness of masculinity is achieved, doesn’t this mean that androphiles are somehow unmasculine? Actually what it means is that they are potentially hyper-masculine. It is true that we admire unselfconscious figures like Siegfried or Arjuna, because they seem to possess a certain purity. But such men are always ultimately revealed to be merely the plaything of forces over which they have no control. Greater still then a naïve, unselfconscious purity is the power of an awakened man, who consciously recognizes and cultivates his virtues, striving to take control of his destiny and to perfect himself. This is part and parcel of the ideal of spiritual virility Julius Evola spoke of so often.

The difference between Siegfried and Arjuna is that the latter had the god Krishna around to awaken him. Krishna taught him that he is indeed a plaything of forces over which he has no control. But Arjuna then affirmed this, affirmed his role in the cosmic scheme as the executioner of men, and became the fiercest warrior that had ever lived.

Most men unconsciously follow the script of masculinity, pushed along by hormones to realize the masculine ideal — usually only to find the same hormones putting them in thrall to women and, later, children. Androphiles consciously recognize and affirm masculinity, and because their erotic desires are directed towards other men, they have the potential to achieve far more in the realm of masculine accomplishment than those who, again, have to “struggle to keep food on the table or get new sneakers for Junior.” Thus, far from being “unmasculine,” androphiles have it within their power to become, well, Overmen. Androphiles have awakened to the god in themselves and other men. There is an old saying on the Left Hand Path: “There is no god above an awakened man.” There is also no man above an awakened man. So much for the idea that a man’s love for other men is a badge of inferiority.

Implicit in the above is something I have not remarked on thus far, and that Donovan does not discuss: the duality in the masculine character. It is a rather remarkable thing, as I alluded to earlier, that testosterone both makes a man want to fight, to strive, and to explore — and also to inseminate a woman and tie himself down to home and family. Of course, without that latter effect the race would die out. But it is nevertheless the case that men are pulled in two directions, just by being men: towards heaven and towards earth. To borrow some terms from Evola again, they have within themselves both uranic and chthonic tendencies. Modern biologists have a way of dealing with this: they insist that all of life is nothing but competition for resources and reproduction. Thus, all of men’s uranic striving, all of their quest for the ideal, all of their adventures and accomplishments, are nothing more than ways in which they make themselves more attractive to females. This is sheer nonsense: nothing but the mindset of modern, middle-class, hen-pecked professors projected onto all of nature.

The truth is that men strive to realize the ideal of masculinity in ways that not only have nothing to do with the furtherance of the species, but are often positively inimical to it. Perhaps the best and most extreme example of masculine toughness one could give is the willingness of the samurai to disembowel themselves over questions of honor. Men strive for ideals, often at the expense of life. Masculinity has a dimension that can best be described as supernatural — as above nature. Women are far more tied to nature than men are, and this (and not sexist oppression) is the real reason why it is almost exclusively men who have been philosophers, priests, mystics, scientists, and artists. It is woman’s job to pull man back to earth and perpetuate life.

One way to look at androphilia is that it is not just the masculine come to consciousness of itself, but the masculine ridding itself of the “natural.” This “natural” side of the man is not without value (again, without it we would go extinct), but it has almost nothing to do with what makes men great. The androphile is free to cultivate the truly masculine aspects of the male soul, because he is free of the pull of the feminine and of the natural. This has to have something to do with why it is that so many great philosophers, artists, writers, mystics, and others, have tended to be androphiles. In 1913, D. H. Lawrence wrote the following to a correspondent: “I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not: so that he loves the body of a man better than the body of a woman — as I believe the Greeks did, sculptors and all, by far. . . . He can always get satisfaction from a man, but it is the hardest thing in life to get one’s soul and body satisfied from a woman, so that one is free for oneself. And one is kept by all tradition and instinct from loving a man.”

The androphile, again, is masculinity brought to consciousness of itself — and in him, it would seem, much else is brought to consciousness as well. For what else are science, philosophy, religion, art, and poetry but the world brought to consciousness of itself? These things — which are almost exclusively the products of men — are what set us apart and make us unique as a species. Human beings (again, almost exclusively men), unlike all other species, are capable of reflecting upon and understanding the world. We do this in scientific and philosophical theories, but also in fiction, poetry, and painting. Some of us, of course, are more capable of this than others — capable of achieving this reflective stance towards existence itself. And it would seem that of those men that are, some carry things even further and become fully aware of the masculine ideal that they themselves represent. And they fall in love with this. Sadly, androphile writers, artists, poets, etc., have often bought into the notion that their desire for other men makes them unmasculine and, like Oscar Wilde, have shoe-horned themselves into the role of the decadent, effeminate aesthete.

I think that when Donovan describes masculinity as a religion this is not just a desire to be provocative. I think he does experience his admiration for men as sacred. If this is the case, then it is natural for men who feel as he does to insist that such a feeling cannot be indecent or perverse. Further, it is natural for them to wonder why there are men such as themselves. What I have tried to do in the above reflections (which go beyond what Donovan says in his book) is to develop a theory of the “cosmic role,” if you will, of the masculine itself, and of the androphile. I believe Donovan is thinking along the same lines I am, though he might not express things the same way. He writes at one point:

Masculinity is a religion, and I see potential for androphiles to become its priests — to devote themselves to it and to the gods of men as clergymen devote their lives to the supernatural. What other man can both embody the spirit of manhood and revere it with such perfect devotion? This may sound far-fetched, but is it? If so, then why? Forget about gay culture and everything you associate with male homosexuality. Strip it down to its raw essence — a man’s sexual desire for men — and reimagine the destiny of that man. Reimagine what this desire focused on masculinity could mean, what it could inspire, and who the men who experience it could become. (p. 116)

There is much else in Androphilia that is well-worth discussing, though a review cannot cover everything. Particularly worthy of attention is Donovan’s discussion of masculinity in terms of what he calls physical masculinity, essential masculinity, and cultural masculinity. Then there is Donovan’s discussion of masculine “values.” These really should be called “virtues” (especially given the etymology of this word — mentioned earlier — Donovan his missed a bit of an opportunity here!). The language of “values” is very modern. What he really has in mind is virtues in the Aristotelian sense of excellences of the man. Donovan lists such qualities as self-reliance, independence, personal responsibility, achievement, integrity, etc. He starts to sound a bit like Ayn Rand in this part of the book, but it’s hard to quarrel with his message. The book ends with a perceptive discussion of “gay marriage,” which Donovan opposes, seeing it as yet another way in which gays are aping straight relationships, yearning narcissistically for society’s “approval.”

This is really a superb book, which all men can profit from, not just androphiles. If one happens to be an androphile, however, one will find this is a liberating and revolutionary work.

Elisabeth Badinter bezweifelt einen Unterschied zwischen Kindern und Idioten

Ellen KOSITZA:

Elisabeth Badinter bezweifelt einen Unterschied zwischen Kindern und Idioten

Ex: http://www.sezession.de/

Wo spielt denn bloß dieses Szenario, das diese Woche von ungezählten Medien als „weiche“  Konkurrenz zu Sarrazin aufgegriffen wird? Die Rede geht von einer Rückkehr des Muttermythos, und zwar in bedrohlichem Ausmaß. Es gebe immer mehr Frauen, die sich von einem „naturalistischen Feminismus verführen“ lassen.

Es handele sich um verblendete Muttertiere, die „nur“ wegen eines oder mehreren Kinder „gleich einige Jahre zu Hause bleiben“ und sich mit einer kindverbundenen Lebensweise auch noch als „authentische, naturverbundene und weniger konsumorientierte Avantgarde“ fühlen.

Bewerkstelligt, so heißt es, habe diesen Sinneswandel mitnichten die Offensive etwa einer Ursula von der Leyen, die vor Jahr und Tag einen „konservativen Feminismus“ zum Leben erwecken wollte – der freilich das Gegenteil einer Rückbesinnung auf mütterliche Tugenden implizierte. Nein, dieser gegenaufklärerische Feminismus, der „Mutterschaft als etwas Erhabenes verehrt“, sei das Resultat einer „Heiligen Allianz der Reaktionäre“. Nicht die üblichen Verdächtigen wie Kirche und politisch Konservative, sondern ein Klüngel aus Ökologen, Esoterikern, Ärzten, Verhaltensforschern, Stillorganisationen und 68er-Töchtern, die die mühsam errungene Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter wieder ins Wanken bringen. Das Patriarchat schlägt zurück – unter weiblicher Mithilfe.

 Der Leser reibt sich die Augen: Welcher Ort, welche Zeit wird denn hier verhandelt?

 Es ist Elisabeth Badinter, seit Jahrzehnten Frankreichs (liberale!) Vorzeigefeministin, die ihr Land derzeit von einem massiven roll back in punkto Emanzipation bedroht sieht. Ihr Buch Le conflit. La femme et la mère, das in Frankreich gleich nach Erscheinen auf Platz 1 der Verkaufslisten schnellte und heiß diskutiert wurde, ist ein Plädoyer für die Abtrennung der mütterlichen Sphäre von der weiblichen Identität.

Der Mutterinstinkt sei eine Erfindung: Mit dieser These hatte Badinter vor dreißig Jahren Furore gemacht. Heute beweise aus ihrer Sicht die wachsende Gruppe der childfree – der bewußt kinderlosen Frauen-, daß es keine “universelle oder wesentliche Eigenschaften“ gebe, die Frauen von Männern unterscheide. Gesetzt, es sei der Fall, daß jede(r) heute frei seine „Rolle“ wählen könne. Was ist es dann, das Badinter zutiefst besorgt zur Feder greifen läßt? Zweifelt sie etwa die gleichsam naturgegebene, zumindest seit über 200 Jahren erstrittene Autonomie und die seit langem etablierte Selbstbestimmtheit der französischen Frau an? Es gibt keine staatlichen, noch weniger steuerliche Eingriffe, die Frauen „an den Herd“ binden wollen. Daß nun etwas mehr Frauen in Frankreich ihre Kinder einige Monate stillen wollen, geschieht aus freien Stücken. Badinter hält diese neue „freiwillige Dienstbarkeit“ für brandgefährlich.

Während mindestens 60% der deutschen und noch weit mehr der skandinavischen Frauen ihren Säugling ein Vierteljahr nach der Geburt wenigstens teilweise mit Muttermilch versorgen, sind es in Frankreich nicht mal 20%. Tendenz allerdings: steigend. Und das findet Badinter – auch mit Verweis darauf, wie unfein und lächerlich der Stillvorgang jahrhundertelang in bürgerlichen Kreisen galt – besorgniserregend. Sie sieht eine Front von „Still-Ayatollahs“ am Werk, eine Bande, die zudem Gerüchte von der Förderlichkeit des Co-Sleepings (Kleinkind im Bett der Eltern, ein altes Eva-Herman-Thema) und einer engen Mutter-Kind-Bindung in die Welt setzten.

Badinter, die selbst während ihres Studiums drei Kinder zur Welt brachte, ist enttäuscht, daß nun selbst – und gerade! – die Töchter jener Feministinnen, die einst unter der Parole „Ich Zuerst!“ sich von der Knechtschaft gegenüber dem Baby und „den Machos zu Hause und am Arbeitsplatz“ befreit hätten, sich nun dem Druck einer „Gute-Mutter-Ideologie“ beugten. Klingt fast, als herrsche ganz privater Zwist im Hause Badinter…

In ihrem Heimatland stieß das Buch der emeritierten Professorin auf ein geteiltes Echo – und gelangte zwischen die Fronten. Selbst emanzipierte Grünen-Politikerinnen schimpften sie eine „Steinzeit-Feministin“. In der Tat fällt Badinter trotz einiger interessanter Fragen, die sie stellt, hinter ihr Niveau zurück.

Ist es tatsächlich angebracht, die Richtlinien der weltweit tätigen La Leche League, einer Stillorganisation mit weltweitem Tätigkeitsradius, aufzufächern, als handle es sich um eine Terrororganisation? Badinter zählt seitenlang die „angeblichen“ Vorteile des Stillens auf, um dann allein eines mit Bestimmtheit zurückzuweisen: Stillen macht nicht intelligentere Kinder. Sie klagt, das Eltern, die bereuen, je Kinder bekommen zu haben, heute nicht zu Wort kämen oder sich nicht mehr trauten, diesen Freiheitsverlust einzugestehen. Noch 1970 hätten 70% von 10.000 Befragten erklärt, nein, rückblickend hätten sie besser keine Elternschaft angestrebt. Der Vollzeitmutter eines Kleinkinds könne es schließlich noch heute vorkommen, als würde sie „den ganzen Tag in Gesellschaft eines Inkontinenten und geistig Zurückgebliebenen verbringen“. Fast scheint es, als würde Badinter stillende Frauen, solche, die ohne Narkotika ihre Kinder zur Welt brachten und am Ende noch so verrückt sind, ihre Kinder in Stoffwindeln zu wickeln und selbst zu bekochen, ebenfalls den Geistesschwachen zurechnen.

Jedenfalls gehören sie nach Badinters Wertung nicht zu den Frauen, die es sich selbstbewußt herausnehmen, über ihren „Geist, ihre physische, emotionale und sexuelle Energie frei verfügen zu können.“ Die Französin sei traditionell eine Rabenmutter, sagt Badinter stolz, und aus ihrer Sicht führe alles andere zu einer Krise der Gleichberechtigung.

Hartnäckig - diese Klage durchzieht das Buch - hält die Autorin an ihrer Ansicht fest, daß die heutige Gesellschaft kinderlose Frauen „tiefgreifend“ ächtet. Man staunt. Ist das so, in Frankreich? Gibt es dort keine Pendants zu unseren Thea Dorns, Sabine Christiansens, Anne Wills und Angela Merkels, die hierzulande durchaus angesehene Positionen in der Öffentlichkeit bekleiden?

Ein Punkt in Badinters Buch ist immerhin interessant. Sie konstatiert, daß sich das Idealbild der Mutter nicht mehr mit dem der zeitgenössischen Frau decke. Dadurch verschrieben sich Frauen – Mütter wie Kinderlose – häufig einer „Logik des Alles-oder-Nichts.“ Heißt: Sich hervorragend auf dem Arbeitsmarkt zu positionieren ist eine ähnlich lebensfüllende Aufgabe wie die, eine 1a-Mutter zu sein. Beides zugleich will Frau sich nicht zumuten. Die französischen Frauen stünden deshalb bis heute gemeinsam mit den ebenfalls ungern stillenden und in der Mehrzahl außerhäuslich arbeitenden Isländerinnen und Irinnen an der europäischen Sitze der Gebärquoten, weil hier die frühzeitige Fremdbetreuung der Kinder nie übel beleumundet war und die meisten Mütter vollzeiterwerbstätig sind. Umgekehrt ist es in „gebärfaulen“ Ländern wie Deutschland, Japan und Italien. Dort sind bzw. waren Krippen eine Rarität, und darum zögerten Frauen die Geburt auch nur eines Kindes möglichst lange heraus. Heißt: Wenn man die Französinnen noch länger mit Vorstellungen traktiert, sich selbst um ihre Kinder zu kümmern, werde auch dort die Geburtenrate sinken.

 Die Argumentation besticht an der Oberfläche. Erweitert man aber den Blick – etwa auf die Verhältnisse im frauenerwerbsreichen, aber kinderarmen Mitteldeutschland, auf den Gebärstreik russischer Frauen oder auf die relativ hohen Geburtenziffern in den USA bei einer mäßigen Frauenwerbsquote gerade außerhalb prekärer Verhältnisse – dann beginnt auch diese Theorie zu schwanken. Man darf gespannt sein, wie Badinters eben in Deutschland erschienes Buch Der Konflikt. Die Frau und die Mutter über die vermeintliche schleichende Wiederversklavung der Frau hierzulande aufgenommen wird. Emma und FAZ hatten bereits im Juli großflächig versucht, die Debatte – im Sinne Badinters – anzuheizen, diese Woche gaben zahlreiche Blättern,von Spiegel bis Zeit (gewohnheitsmäßig mies geschrieben von Susanne Mayer, die´s für nötig befindet zu erwähnen, daß  Badinter Jüdin ist), der Französin das Wort.

Leadership & the Vital Order

Leadership & the Vital Order:
Selected Aphorisms by Hans Prinzhorn, Ph.D., M.D.

Hans Prinzhorn

 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated and edited by Joseph D. Pryce

The enduring fame of German psychotherapist Hans Prinzhorn (1886–1933) is based almost entirely upon one book, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the mentally ill), that brilliant and quite unprecedented monograph on the artistic productions of the mentally ill, which appeared in 1922. Sadly, it is too often forgotten that Hans Prinzhorn was the most brilliant and independent disciple of Germany’s greatest 20th-Century philosopher, Ludwig Klages (1872–1956).

Although Prinzhorn himself would have protested against the oblivion into which his mentor’s life’s work has fallen, it is a fact that Prinzhorn is still a major presence in the technical literature, whilst his hero, paradoxically, has been “killed by silence.” One should be thankful for even the smallest mercies.

Prinzhorn is even now a not inconsiderable presence in the field that he made his own, and he will remain a major figure, albeit a controversial one, in the field of psychology, as long as his discoveries are cherished and his insights developed as a living heritage by those who recognize, and are willing to repay, at least some small portion of the debt that scholarship still owes to his memory.

Humanitarian Demagogues, Egalitarian Rabble. Whether today’s mechanistic and atomistic experiments with human beings originated in the Orient or in the Occident, the result is always the same: the tyranny of a clique in the name of the equality of all. And it is from this very tendency that the fantastic pipe dream of human individuals being reduced to the status of mere numbers arises. This wishful thinking is a symptom of the nihilistic Will to Power that conceals its true nature behind the cloak of such humanitarian ideals as humility, solicitude for the weak, the awakening of the oppressed masses, the plans for universal happiness, and the fever-swamp vision of perpetual progress. All of these lunatic projects invariably result in a demagogic assault on the part of the inferior rabble against the nobler type of human being. These mad projects, it need hardly be said, are always concocted in the name of “humanity,” in spite of the fact that decades earlier Nietzsche had conclusively demonstrated that it was the ressentiment, or “life-envy,” of those who feel themselves to be oppressed by fate that was at the root of all such tendencies. Indeed, it is even now quite difficult for the select few who have no wish to enroll themselves among the oppressed mob to understand the realities of their situation!

The Goals of Socialism. When we set our goals in the direction of socialism, whether in the sphere of politics, of welfare work, or of the ideal community, the fanaticism that inspires the socialist is customarily tinged with Christianity. Thus the socialist urges the citizen to progress from wicked egoism to a more social attitude. Even when we ignore the social, religious, or political nature of the ideologue’s desiderata, there is one positive aspect to this development, for socialism at least directs our attention away from the tyrannical ego and towards the world that surrounds us, thus calling upon the only one of socialism’s fundamental motives that we can regard as positive and biologically sensible.

Characterological Truth vs. Psychoanalytical Error. The most extensive, pleasant, and (one might even say) amusing effects wrought by the application of the psychoanalytic treatment depended on the fact that the most wretched and feeble blockhead was now able to convince himself that he was equal to Goethe in that the instincts that played so decisive a role in the cretin’s development were identical with those that were operative in the case of Goethe, and it was only a malicious practical joke on the part of Destiny that permitted Goethe to find in poetry a congenial sublimation of his sexuality.

The Psychopath and the Revolution. We can hold out no hope whatever for the successful creation of the sort of community that is constructed by ideologists on the basis of purely rational considerations, for the projects that are hatched out in the mind of the rationalist are most definitely not analogous to the development of living forms in nature, no matter how often the contrary position has been proclaimed by false prophets. Thus, the delusive hopes that are cherished for the successful implementation of the simple-minded schemes of our socialist and humanitarian ideologists must fail in the future as they have always failed in the past. The only tangible result of these schemes has been to intoxicate the isolated psychopath with an egalitarian frenzy, from which his tormented ego awakens, more desperate than ever, in order to plunge once again, with ever-increasing violence, into his political ecstasies, into bellowing his eulogies to those nameless “masses” who are so dear to the ideologue that he has appointed them to be the sole beneficiaries of his activism, now that he has been made sufficiently mad by a nebulous and insatiable longing for “liberation.” But the “sham” anonymity, which functions effectively as the cloak for politicians who pretend to act in the name of “the masses,” can only benefit clever, robust, and willful politicians, such as those who rule the Soviet Union; the real psychopath, on the other hand, who often possesses a taste for novel sensations and who, perhaps, may also be seeking personal publicity, will never be able to conform to the prescriptions of such an icy, strict self-discipline. As a result, he “breaks out,” and is soon overwhelmed by calamities from which he thinks he can only escape by resorting to even more violent attempts to achieve “liberation.” From the standpoint of psychology, the history of revolutions is very helpful to those who wish to increase their understanding of the “everyday” behavior—as well as the political actions—of his fellow human beings, not least to the physician who seeks enlightenment as to the nature of the motivations that drive men to perform violent deeds in situations to which they lend the halo of freedom, equality, and fraternity.

Heredity as Destiny (and Tabula Rasa as Sheer Nonsense). The life-curve of an individual’s development is a single event, which arrays itself along the lines of irrevocable changes. Strictly speaking, therefore, every occurrence, no matter how insignificant, involves an irrevocable change: in life nothing can be reversed, nothing repudiated, nothing ventured without an attendant responsibility, nothing can be annihilated: that formula constitutes the biological basis of destiny. Just as the individual must accept his biological heritage as a whole, whether he likes it or not, in precisely the same fashion must he accept the pre-ordained pattern of obscure rhythms transpiring within him.

Today we have become tragically unconcerned with our biological destiny, to say nothing of the fact that we refuse to feel the slightest reverence to the sphere of life, to which we owe everything. …That very attitude accounts for the success that has greeted the claims advanced by Alfred Adler and his followers, who advance the dogma that the hitherto customary views on heredity are fundamentally false, since man is born as a tabula rasa whereon his environment makes impressions that, by means of education, one can direct at will, and according to the capacity of that will, toward any desired goal. Adler compounds his felony by claiming that there is no such thing as inborn talent or traits of disposition. …

It would be impossible to reject the principles of biological theory more absolutely than Adler and his cohorts have done. Even that which we understand by the old, almost obsolescent name of “temperament”—that which represents the sum-total of the somatically connected, permanent tendencies of an individual—even this link between the purely psychological and the purely somatic view is repudiated by Adler in his grotesquely teleological and hyper-rationalist construction. … Since there is no biological basis whatsoever for his stupendous assertions, one must seek for such a basis in another sphere, viz., the author’s ideology. Sure enough, we learn that Adler is a fanatical believer in the coming Utopia of socialism, and, as we all recognize, no Utopia can prosper until a faceless equality of disposition has been forced upon every individual by the ideological zealots who will run the show. Therefore I denounce the politically tendentious World-View that Adler and his apostles put forward as “science,” for it is a perfect example of nihilism passing itself off as scholarship, and no cloak of pedantic and prudent caution can hide the fact.

Genetic Endowment and Environmental Conditioning. Upon his entry into individual existence, the human being’s development as a psychosomatic creature is determined as regards substance, capacity for expansion, and direction, in the first place by his genetic endowment as a whole; in the second place by his pre-natal environment; and lastly by the circumstances of his birth. That almost all the active factors rise and fall in varying phases, makes a rational interpretation and estimate of the state of things at any given moment impossible in the strictest sense of that word.

But the fact that such an admission of the difficulties that arise due to methodological limitations is exploited by false prophets in order to deceive the world as to the real nature of biological facts—usually in order to breathe some life into the defunct heresy of the infant born as a tabula rasa—is either a sad indication of their childish mentality or additional evidence that they are indulging their ideological proclivities in the wrong place. What Goethe described as “the law under which you entered the world,” what Kant, Schopenhauer, and others called the “intelligible character,” is the first unavoidable actuality that we must accept as the destiny of our being, and as the starting-point of all investigation and thinking that relates to the human being. All experience and all reasonable thinking drives us back to this basic fact.

The Occidental Observer, August 8, 2010, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Pryce-Prinzhorn.html

Joseph Pryce (email him) is a writer and poet and translator from New York. He is author of the collection of mystical poems Mansions of Irkalla, reviewed here. His translation of the German philosopher Ludwig Klages’ work will be published shortly.

Deutschlands Kinder schlagen Alarm! Fehlende Zeit mit den Eltern, immenser Gruppendruck!

Deutschlands Kinder schlagen Alarm! Fehlende Zeit mit den Eltern, immenser Gruppendruck!

Eva Herman : http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

Aktuelle Untersuchungen zeigen: Nie zuvor fühlten sich Kinder und Jugendliche derartig gestresst und besorgt wie heute. Die Ergebnisse legen den Rückschluss nahe: Kinder werden zu früh in Gruppen abgegeben, ihre Eltern verlieren zunehmend Einfluss und können ihren Kindern, bedingt durch berufliche Abwesenheit, in kleinen und großen Notsituationen häufig nicht helfen.

Kinder und Jugendliche sind unsicher und ängstlich wie nie: Alle Umfragen und Studien der zurückliegenden Jahre signalisieren: Kinder und Jugendliche fürchten sich vor der Zukunft!

Alle aktuellen Untersuchungen zur Schulsituation in Deutschland bestätigen: Nie zuvor gab es größere Probleme zwischen Lehrern und Schülern!

Alle derzeitigen Aussagen von Berufsausbildern Jugendlicher laufen auf die eine Aussage hinaus: Zu keinem Zeitpunkt waren die jungen Leute unqualifizierter für das Berufsleben als heute!

Der Alltag der Jugendlichen ist zunehmend geprägt durch »Gefühle der Ohnmacht und des Alleinseins, der Sinnleere und Perspektivlosigkeit«, heißt es schon in der Studie Jugend 2007 – zwischen Versorgungsparadies und Zukunftsängsten, die das Rheingold-Institut für qualitative Markt- und Medienanalysen im Auftrag von Axel-Springer-Mediahouse durchgeführt hat. Mobbing, Gewalt und die immer mächtiger werdende Angst vor dem Abgleiten in ein Hartz-IV-Dasein steigerten das Gefühl der Verunsicherung und der Orientierungslosigkeit. »Selbst die Jugendlichen, die sich noch materiell abgesichert fühlen, erleben die Zukunft als ein schwarzes Loch. Sie wissen nicht, wofür sie gebraucht werden, wofür sie kämpfen und wogegen sie rebellieren können«, so die Rheingold-Untersuchung.

Die neueste und aktuellste Studie des Instituts für Psychologie und des Zentrums für angewandte Gesundheitswissenschaften (ZAG) der Leuphana-Universität Lüneburg für die Deutsche Angestellten Krankenkasse (DAK) schlägt erneut Alarm: 33 Prozent aller Schüler in Deutschland sind gestresst!

Folgende Stress-Symptome wurden festgestellt:

– Einschlafprobleme (22 Prozent)

– Gereiztheit (21 Prozent)

– Kopfschmerzen und Rückenschmerzen (16 Prozent)

– Niedergeschlagenheit (14 Prozent)

– Nervosität (11 Prozent)

– Schwindelgefühle (9 Prozent)

– Bauchschmerzen (8 Prozent)

Das Portal für Bildungsinformationen bildungsklick.de hat die DAK-Studie ausgewertet, aus der hervorgeht, dass mehr als 50 Prozent der Betroffenen ihre Gefühle in der Schule mit »verzweifelt, hoffnungslos, ausweglos« beschrieben. »Insgesamt geben mehr als zwei Drittel der Schüler mit häufigen Beschwerden an, dass sie in der Schule regelmäßig negative Gefühle erleben. … Schweigen und Verdrängen macht alles noch schwieriger.«

Kinder und Jugendliche von heute haben enorme Zukunftsängste.

Die letzte Shell-Jugendstudie hatte schon Vergleichbares als Ergebnis: Sie zeigt, dass Jugendliche deutlich stärker besorgt sind, ihren Arbeitsplatz verlieren beziehungsweise keine adäquate Beschäftigung finden zu können. Waren es im Jahr 2002 noch 55 Prozent, die hier beunruhigt waren, stieg die Zahl 2006 bereits auf 69 Prozent an. Auch die Angst vor der schlechten wirtschaftlichen Lage und vor steigender Armut nahm in den Jahren zwischen 2002 und 2006 von 62 Prozent auf 66 Prozent zu.

Die Bewältigungsstrategien, die Jugendliche entwickeln, um mit ihren Schwierigkeiten fertig zu werden, sind laut der Rheingold-Untersuchung sehr verschieden. Die einen betreiben Dauerkonsum, andere schotten sich ab und flüchten in die künstlichen Paradiese von Internet und Playstation-Welten. Von der einstigen Spaßgesellschaft, in der alles »ganz easy« lief, sind lediglich vereinzelte Bruchstücke übrig geblieben.  

Zahlreiche Kinder und Jugendliche in Deutschland stehen heute unter einem enormen Druck, der insbesondere von den Gleichaltrigen in den sogenannten Peer Groups ausgeübt wird. Die Orientierung an Gruppenstandards wird in diesem Zusammenhang jedoch oft ignoriert oder bewusst heruntergespielt. Nach Aussagen des kanadischen Psychologen Gordon Neufeld ist die zunehmende Gleichaltrigenorientierung in unserer Gesellschaft von einem alarmierenden und dramatischen Anstieg der Selbstmordrate unter 10- bis 14-Jährigen begleitet, seit 1950 hätte sie sich in dieser Altergruppe in Nordamerika vervierfacht. Ist man bisher davon ausgegangen, dass bei Selbsttötungen junger Menschen die Gründe meist in der Ablehnung der Eltern zu finden sind, ist das nach Ansicht Neufelds inzwischen lange nicht mehr so. Langjährige Beobachtungen und Untersuchungen des Psychologen lassen den Schluss zu, dass der wichtigste Auslöser für den jugendlichen Suizid in der Behandlung durch die Gleichaltrigen zu sehen ist. Je öfter und regelmäßiger Kinder und Jugendliche ihre Zeit mit Personen gleichen Alters teilen, und je wichtiger sie in dieser Gruppe füreinander werden, umso verheerender kann sich ihr unsensibles Verhalten auf jene Kinder auswirken, die es nicht schaffen, dazuzugehören und die sich abgelehnt oder ausgeschlossen fühlen.

Auch in anderen Ländern ist das Phänomen bekannt: Die amerikanische Zeitschrift für Kultur, Politik und Literatur, Harper’s Magazine, druckte vor einiger Zeit eine Sammlung von Abschiedsbriefen japanischer Kinder ab, die Selbstmord verübt hatten: Die meisten von ihnen litten unter der unerträglichen Tyrannisierung durch Gleichaltrige und gaben dies als Grund  an für ihren Entschluss, aus dem Leben zu gehen.

Gruppendruck kann große Ängste verursachen, aber auch Hass auslösen. Der Student Cho Seung-Hui fühlte sich in »die Ecke gedrängt« – das gab er wenigstens als Grund an, nachdem er im April 2007 auf dem Campus von Blacksburg im amerikanischen Bundesstaat Virginia 32 Menschen getötet hatte. Die Wut und das Bedürfnis nach Vergeltung können über Jahre wachsen, Jahre, in denen Rachepläne geschmiedet und Vorbereitungen getroffen werden können. Schließlich kommt der Punkt, an dem die Wut zu groß wird: Alle sollen endlich erfahren, was sie dem Betroffenen angetan haben. Ähnlich der Amoklauf von 2001 in Erfurt, bei dem der 19-jährige Robert Steinhäuser am Gutenberg-Gymnasium 16 Personen und dann sich selbst tötete. Er war von der Schule verwiesen worden.

Schon zu Beginn der 1960er-Jahre warnte der amerikanische Soziologe  James Coleman davor, dass die Eltern als wichtigste Quelle für Werte und als Hauptbezugsperson für ihre Kinder und deren Verhalten verdrängt würden – und zwar durch gleichaltrige Bezugspersonen. Doch damals war das noch kein Thema, beginnende Fehlentwicklungen bei Jugendlichen wurden – insbesondere in Deutschland – mit dem Dilemma der Eltern erklärt, die sich nicht mit den Folgen des zurückliegenden Krieges auseinandergesetzt hätten.  

Der kanadische Psychologe Gordon Neufeld geht davon aus, dass eine starke Gruppensozialisation bei Kindern und Jugendlichen auch Auswirkungen auf das spätere Verhalten im Erwachsenenalter hat: Wer sehr jung die Gruppe als Lebensrealität empfunden und kennen gelernt hat, und wem die Erfahrungen des Alleinseins, aber auch die einer Familie und dem damit verbundenen Zusammenhalt fehlen, der verlässt sich später auch nicht auf sich allein. Extreme Erscheinungsformen der Gleichaltrigenorientierung  sind nach seiner Meinung tyrannisierendes Verhalten mit Gewaltanwendung, Selbstmorde und Morde unter Kindern und Jugendlichen. Auch die inzwischen allseits  bekannten Massenpartys mit Höhepunkten wie Koma-Sauf-Wettbewerbe oder Gang-Bangs, also Massenvergewaltigungen, bei denen die Mädchen vorher zustimmen, können zu diesen Folgen zählen.

Heutige Jugendliche stehen oft als Krawallmacher, Schläger oder Kleinkriminelle in der Zeitung oder sie scheinen langweilig, angepasst und konturlos zu sein. Die Schere geht auseinander zwischen extrem gewaltbereiten Jugendlichen und kleinen Spießern. Wo sind die jungen Leute mit Idealismus, mit festen Zielen vor den Augen, mit Ecken und Kanten, mit »Flausen im Kopf«? Keine Frage: Jede Elterngeneration hat den Kopf geschüttelt über die Jugendlichen ihrer Zeit. Doch das Phänomen, dass die einen viel zu wenig rebellieren und die anderen erschreckend über das Ziel hinausschießen, ist neu. Die Jugendlichen von heute scheinen zum einen emotionslos, gelangweilt und unterkühlt zu sein, die anderen verroht und gewaltbereit.

Immer mehr Jugendliche haben Angst davor, ihren Platz im Leben nicht zu finden, nicht gebraucht zu werden. Sie isolieren sich, statt sich abzunabeln – aus Angst, dem Leben nicht die Stirn bieten zu können. Das haben sie nie gelernt. Die einen wurden sich selbst überlassen, den anderen wurde jedes Problem abgenommen, jeder Wunsch erfüllt.

Doch alle genannten Phänomene, die unsere Gesellschaft nachhaltig verändern, sind Hilfeschreie der Kinder. Sie brauchen von Anfang an entscheidend mehr Zeit mit ihren Eltern, mehr Zuwendung und mehr Liebe! Wenn sie erst einmal daran gewöhnt sind, dass ihre Eltern keine Zeit für sie haben, dann ist der Zug häufig schon abgefahren. Alle derzeitigen Regierungsprogramme jedoch glorifizieren nach wie vor die Erwerbstätigkeit der Mütter. Solange das nicht zugunsten der Kinder geändert wird, und solange keine nachhaltigen Bemühungen daran gesetzt werden, Kindern die Anwesenheit ihrer Eltern, speziell der Mutter, zu ermöglichen, wird diese Gesellschaft weiter auseinanderfallen und die genannten Zahlen und Probleme werden weiter steigen.

 

Freitag, 12.02.2010

Kategorie: Allgemeines, Wissenschaft, Politik

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