Psychoanalysis – from the unlocking of the illusions

In the European -speaking world we read from left to right – this applies to all the writings that we have to do every day. This is how it always goes forward: When we read a book, our gaze wanders line by line from the top right. Once at the bottom right, do we switch to the next page – perhaps towards reconciliation at the end of a story? At the beginning we hope that in the end a positive resolution or a new knowledge is waiting for us. But if you think about it exactly, it becomes clear that our gaze when reading is not just forward. Sometimes the eyes have to jump back to an earlier place in the text in order to better understand the story – the step backwards is necessary to capture the content.

Kai Rugenstein explains in his article “Back where?” The regression, a central concept of psychoanalysis, which means the temporary withdrawal to an earlier level of development, especially in times of the crisis. The regression is a concept with which both mental and social phenomena can be understood-at least one thesis of the band »between fear and hope published in the Psychosocial publishing house. Psychoanalysis in times of social crises «.

Crises, fear and retreat

The publishing Eckehard Pioch, Luisa von Hauenschild, Katarzyna Meinert, Isabel Mühlinghaus and Tilman Watzel are experienced psychoanalysts who also work as teachers at various psychoanalytic institutes. According to them, the large number of current conflicts increase unconscious defense mechanisms. Both individually and on a collective level, there is increasingly withdrawal in the inner retreat in omnipotence fantasies, a search for support in promise of salvation and the denial of a reality that is shaped by internal and external restrictions and fainting. This defense increases in a devaluation of others and ultimately in violence, for example in the form of group -related misanthropy. The aim of the volume is to discuss these psychological dynamics both as an expression and as the basis of various crises.

In his contribution “› Rotettet the beasts! ‹Versus› one should believe in something like love! ‹« «« How human aggression burdens both personal relationships and social divisions. Using the example of Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger” (1890), he describes a impoverished writer who escapes in megalomania and omnipotence ideas to displace need and loneliness. This defense reinforces its isolation and despair: instead of asking for help, he is hungry, intoxicated and homeless by Kristiania (now Oslo) and dreams of literary fame.

Pioch connects this literary figure with Freud’s cultural criticism and emphasizes that the denial of dependency is closely linked. Freud understood people as not inherently peaceful and affection, but emphasized the human tendency towards aggression. Fellow people would not only be seen as possible helpers and partners, but at the bottom of the unconscious as a goal for exploitation, violence, humiliation and destruction. Pioch warns that denying one’s own condition and destructiveness can culminate in a collective desire to destroy, and illustrates this using the example of colonial acts of violence. The image of the indigenous population in colonialism as “beasts” reflects the repressed own shoots – sadism, hatred and hunger for power – and at the same time cover the actual dependence of the colonizers on the locals, without whose help they could not survive in the foreign environment.

Seductive escape of reality

The susceptibility to conspiracy narrative illuminates Karin Johanna Zienert-Silts in her contribution “Woe to those who are called evil well and good evil …”. It emphasizes that such narratives use reality distortions and lies to increase fears and uncertainties, especially in times of crisis, and sees the basis of susceptibility in early childhood relationship experiences. In this way, those affected in rigid persuasive systems and promise of salvation of an almighty Redeemer are looking for the hold that they once lacked. As an example, she describes this destructive dynamic based on Donald Trump and his followers; However, she emphasizes that we are all susceptible to this dynamic. Psychoanalytic theories show that early childlike experiences of loss and renunciation continue to exist in us and ensure that we commute between paranoid distrust and processing grief.

In addition to dark time diagnoses, a motive for hope runs through the band like a thread.

Sally Weintrobe criticizes the close integration of profit -oriented fossil industry and social shared responsibility: Governments and Economic Systems would act according to wasteful business models that are of little consideration of coming generations. In this waste, the risk of thinking is that the reality of the ecological limits of our planet systematically deny in the mode of fantasized omnipotence. Ultimately, the displacement extends into our individual soul life and leads to an urge for limitless possibilities and endless inner resources. A study carried out by Weintrobe shows how very young people suffer from the psychological consequences and are often still smiled at or devalued.

In addition to dark time diagnoses, a motive for hope runs through the band like a thread: At the end of his contribution – like Herbert Will and Jonathan Lear – Pioch represents the positive role of hope. Connection is also possible in destructive times if the dependence of people is recognized and not displaced. In the article by Cécile Loetz and Jakob Müller, hope appears in the ancient form of the Odysseus – a symbol of modern man, as Horkheimer and Adorno draw in the “Dialectic of Education” (1940): Not by denying reality, but by cunning and mind, he always knows his fate against all adversity to his advantage.

Ultimately, Pioch distinguishes the motive for hope with Freud and emphasizes the uncertainty in the face of future crisis developments: “Who can foresee success and outcome?” But again and again over the entire volume – sometimes clearly, sometimes more marginally – the psychoanalysis itself as a carrier of hope that should influence the course of crises and get more involved in society. Perhaps this is due to the proximity of the term hope for the illusions: the language in the band becomes flowery as soon as it brings hope into play; And the psychoanalysis, in the sense of an institution and practice, is awarded a coat of paint that seems pathetically.

“Negative growth”

Let’s go back to the beginning and thus to Rugenstein’s contribution to the regression: it shows that a “back” into oppressive feelings not only has to be a step backwards, but also allows other interpretations. Freud described regression as a “revitalization of childhood”, which is not done by active doing, but by conscious omission. Psychoanalytic thinking relies on reduction: analyzing, loosening and disguising instead of filling more. This creates a space for a special development path – a “negative growth” that is not about new learning, but about the learning and letting go of old collateral and illusions. This waiver opens up access to new possibilities and does not lead back into the past, but into the openness of life.

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What remains open after reading the volume is the question of the extent to which psychoanalysis itself is affected by social crises. The discipline emerged in times of world wars, but it was also under pressure there. Her German history is characterized by collaboration with the National Socialist regime, divisions and violence, as Shhmuel Erlich and Mira Erlich-Ginor show in her contribution “Contemporary about anti-Semitism”. The crisis resistance of psychoanalysis is also questioned with regard to the technology of “free association”. When associating free, the patient should pronounce thoughts and feelings as unfiltered as possible. This shows patterns that disclose a hidden mental conflict – access to early experiences that feels like, interpreted, interpreted and understood.

But what if the crisis -like social reality breaks all too violently into the psychoanalytic situation, because, for example, both analysts and patients are severely affected by the consequences of a war? Or if the social conditions in an authoritarian regime do not enable “free” speak? If one clarifies the story of Odysseus in the sense of the “dialectic of the Enlightenment”, it can be seen that the individual gets caught up in existing rulership, especially about the imagination of their own self -determination. Anna Freud put this danger disillusioned in 1946: “Psychoanalysis can only thrive where the freedom of the thought prevails.”

Eckehard Pioch, Luisa von Hauenschild, Katarzyna Meinert, Isabel Mühlinghaus, Tilman Watzel (ed.): Between fear and hope. Psychoanalysis in times of social crises. Psychosocial-Verlag, 261 p., Br., € 39.90.