We will be discussing two texts by Herbert Marcuse this year, starting with Eros and Civilization in January. Recall that the purpose of this seminar is to review intelligent criticism that helps us understand the relation between culture and the way we think about psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and mental health in general. That is to say that clinical work does not occur in a vacuum; instead, it operates from a deeper foundation of the construction of value, scientific paradigm, language, power relations, and many other factors. Marcuse was very sensitive to these issues in his own right and offers an exciting volume that we will use as a basis for discussion.
He is deeply concerned with the fact that our civilization is repressed and that individuals are dominated by various forms of a repressive system. He, like Nietzsche, queries about the possibility of a transvaluation of values that would lead to non-repressive forms of culture. He proposes in his book the idea of “non-repressive sublimation,” in which the sexual impulses maintain their erotic energy, bypass their immediate object, and eroticize (energize) non-erotic relationships between individuals. Otherwise, we exist in forms of personal and social alienation that separate the intellectual from the instinctual, of pleasure from thought. Therefore, for Marcuse, we must engage in intellectual liberation from totalitarian forms of thought that regress our instinctual nature. This necessarily is a social and political issue. While the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute of Seattle is not necessarily an agent of political activism, it does recognize that the political does meet both the professional and the clinical. Because we are sensitive to these influences and “effects,” and because we recognize that critical social and political theory is necessary for the development of contemporary psychoanalytic thought and practice, we offer this seminar to our members. We’ll proceed here by way of a series of questions.
1. What is the relationship between social/political issues and psychology (psychoanalysis), according to Marcuse? On this note, what is totalitarianism? How does it affect psychology/psychoanalysis?
2. Has the sacrifice of libido and happiness (through social & cultural repression) actually paid off in our culture/society? What sort of evidence can we give either way? Are there counter-finalities (Sartre’s term from the Critique of Dialectical Reason) that have proven more harmful than any perceived gains?
3. In “Freudian terms, is the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle irreconcilable to such a degree that it necessitates the repressive transformation of man’s instinctual nature?”; or does it allow for a new, non-repessive relationship to nature [note Heidegger's exegesis on the four-fold] as well as for new, non-repressive social and existential relations between individuals?
4. Following the previous question, might it be true that the “repressive” form of civilization is only historically accidental but not necessarily true in any analytic sense?
5. Is it true that Freud’s theory itself refutes his consistent denial of a non-repressive civilization? Do the achievements of a repressive civilization create the seeds for the gradual abolition of repression?
6. What is the relationship between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, according to Freud?
7. Does the reality principle safeguard the pleasure principle?
8. Does the social organization of personal desire/instinct thereby render their resulting aim and direction less than fully authentic, somehow untrue to individuals?
9. What does Freud mean when he asserts that the reality principle never entirely overcomes the pleasure principle and therefore has to be constantly re-established?
10. Can we overcome inner repression? Should we?
11. Is there a possible synthesis for the dialectical struggle between the pleasure principle and the reality principle?
12. What is happiness? How is it related to pleasure?
13. How is regression progressive? How can this inform psychotherapeutic/analytic practice?
14. How does Freud think that the repressive function at the ontogenetic level is interrelated to the phylogenetic level? How can this dialectic inform knowledge between clinical practice and cultural criticism/critical social theory?
KCB
Writing in Seattle
