More on Eros and Civilization

books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md

@@ -414,7 +414,184 @@ Superego:
     than ever before. This time there shall be no killing of the father, not even a
     "symbolic" killing -- because he may not find a successor.
 
-### Misc
+### Repression due to exogenous factors: the central argument
+
+    Therefore, if the historical process tended to make obsolete the institutions
+    of the performance principle, it would also tend to make obsolete the
+    organization of the instincts -- that is to say, to release the instincts from
+    the constraints and diversions required by the performance principle. This
+    would imply the real possibility of a gradual elimination of
+    surplus-repression, whereby an expanding area of destructiveness could be
+    absorbed or neutralized by strengthened libido. Evidently, Freud' s theory
+    precludes the construction of any psychoanalytical utopia. If we accept his
+    theory and still maintain that there is historical substance in the idea of a
+    non-repressive civilization, then it must be derivable from Freud's instinct
+    theory itself. His concepts must be examined to discover whether or not they
+    contain elements that require reinterpretation. This approach would parallel
+    the one used in the preceding sociological discussion.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Freud maintains that an essential conflict between the two principles is
+    inevitable; however, in the elaboration of his theory, this inevitability seems
+    to be opened to question. The conflict, in the form it assumes in civilization,
+    is said to be caused and perpetuated by the prevalence of Ananke, Lebensnot,
+    the struggle for existence. (The later stage of the instinct theory, with the
+    concepts of Eros and death instinct, does not cancel this thesis: Lebensnot
+    now appears as the want and deficiency inherent in organic life itself.) The
+    struggle for existence necessitates the repressive modification of the
+    instincts chiefly because of the lack of sufficient means and resources for
+    integral, painless and toilless gratification of instinctual needs. If this is
+    true, the repressive organization of the instincts in the struggle for
+    existence would be due to exogenous  factors -- exogenous in the sense that
+    they are not inherent in the "nature" of the instincts but emerge from the
+    specific historical conditions under which the instincts develop.
+
+    [...]
+
+    According to Freud, this distinction is meaningless, for the instincts
+    themselves are "historical"; 1 there is no instinctual structure "outside" the
+    historical structure. However, this does not dispense with the necessity of
+    making the distinction -- except that it must be made within  the historical
+    structure itself. The latter appears as stratified on two levels: (a) the
+    phylogenetic-biological level, the development of the animal man in the
+    struggle with nature; and (b) the sociological level, the development of
+    civilized individuals and groups in the struggle among themselves and with
+    their environment . 
+
+    The two levels are in constant and inseparable interaction, but factors
+    generated at the second level are exogenous to the first and have therefore a
+    different weight and validity (although, in the course of the development, they
+    can "sink down" to the first level): they are more relative; they can change
+    faster and without endangering or reversing the development of the genus. This
+    difference in the origin of instinctual modification underlies the distinction
+    we have introduced between repression and surplus-repression; 2 the latter
+    originates and is sustained at the sociological level.
+
+    [...]
+
+    For his metapsychology, it is not decisive whether the inhibitions are imposed
+    by scarcity or by the hierarchical distribution  of scarcity, by the struggle
+    for existence or by the interest in domination. And indeed the two factors --
+    the phylogenetic-biological and the sociological -- have grown together in the
+    recorded history of civilization. But their union has long since become
+    "unnatural" -and so has the oppressive "modification" of the pleasure principle
+    by the reality principle. Freud' s consistent denial of the possibility of an
+    essential liberation of the former implies the assumption that scarcity is as
+    permanent as domination -- an assumption that seems to beg the question. By
+    virtue of this assumption, an extraneous fact obtains the theoretical dignity
+    of an inherent element of mental life, inherent even in the primary instincts.
+    In the light of the long-range trend of civilization, and in the light of
+    Freud' s own interpretation of the instinctual development, the assumption must
+    be questioned. The historical piossibility of a gradual decontrolling of the
+    instinctual development must be taken seriously, perhaps even the historical
+    necessity -- if civilization is to progress to a higher stage of freedom.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The diagram sketches a historical sequence from the beginning of organic life
+    (stages 2 and 3), through the formative stage of the two primary instincts (5),
+    to their "modified " development as human instincts in civilization (6-7). The
+    turning points are at stages 3 and 6. They are both caused by exogenous factors
+    by virtue of which the definite formation as well as the subsequent dynamic of
+    the instincts become "historically acquired." At stage 3, the exogenous factor
+    is the " unrelieved tension " created by the birth of organic life; the
+    "experience" that life is less "satisfactory," more painful, than the preceding
+    stage generates the death instinct as the drive for relieving this tension
+    through regression. The working of the death instinct thus appears as the
+    result of the trauma of primary frustration: want and pain, here caused by a
+    geological-biological event.
+
+    The other turning point, however, is no longer a geological-biological one: it
+    occurs at the threshold of civilization. The exogenous factor here is Ananke,
+    the conscious struggle for existence. It enforces the repressive controls of
+    the sex instincts (first through the brute violence of the primal father, then
+    through institutionalization and internalization), as well as the
+    transformation of the death instinct into socially useful aggression and
+    morality. This organization of the instincts (actually a long process) creates
+    the civilized division of labor, progress, and law and order"; but it also
+    starts the chain of events that leads to the progressive weakening of Eros and
+    thereby to the growth of aggressiveness and guilt feeling. We have seen that
+    this development is not "inherent" in the struggle for existence but only in
+    its oppressive organization, and that at the present stage the possible
+    conquest of want makes this struggle ever more irrational.
+
+    [...]
+
+    In the biological-geological conditions which Freud assumed for the living
+    substance as such, no such change can be envisaged; the birth of life continues
+    to be a trauma, and thus the reign of the Nirvana principle seems to be
+    unshakable. However, the derivatives of the death instinct operate only in
+    fusion with the sex instincts; as long as life grows, the former remain
+    subordinate to the latter; the fate of the destrudo (the "energy" of the
+    destruction instincts) depends on that of the libido. Consequently, a
+    qualitative change in the development of sexuality must necessarily alter the
+    manifestations of the death instinct.
+
+    Thus, the hypothesis of a non-repressive civilization must be theoretically
+    validated first by demonstrating the possibility of a nonrepressive development
+    of the libido under the conditions of mature civilization. The direction of
+    such a development is indicated by those mental forces which, according to
+    Freud, remain essentially free from the reality principle and carry over this
+    freedom into the world of mature consciousness. Their re-examination must be
+    the next step.
+
+### Detours to death: death instinct and negentropy
+
+    Our re-examination must therefore begin with Freud's analysis of the death
+    instinct.  We have seen that, in Freud's late theory of the instincts, the
+    "compulsion inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things
+    which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of
+    external disturbing forces" 4 is common to both primary instincts: Eros and
+    death instinct. Freud regards this retrogressive tendency as an expression of
+    the "inertia" in organic life, and ventures the following hypothetical
+    explanation: at the time when life originated in inanimate matter, a strong
+    "tension" developed which the young organism strove to relieve by returning to
+    the inanimate condition. 5 At the early stage of organic life, the road to the
+    previous state of inorganic existence was probably very short, and dying very
+    easy; but gradually "external influences " lengthened this road and compelled
+    the organism to take ever longer and more complicated "detours to death."
+
+[[!img detours-to-death.png link="no"]]
+
+### Phantasy
+
+    Phantasy plays a most decisive function in the total mental structure: it links
+    the deepest layers of the unconscious with the highest products of
+    consciousness (art), the dream with the reality; it preserves the archetypes of
+    the genus, the perpetual but repressed ideas of the collective and individual
+    memory, the tabooed images of freedom.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The recognition of phantasy (imagination) as a thought process with its own
+    laws and truth values was not new in psychology and philosophy; Freud' s
+    original contribution lay in the attempt to show the genesis of this mode of
+    thought and its essential connection with the pleasure principle. The
+    establishment of the reality principle causes a division and mutilation of the
+    mind which fatefully determines its entire development. The mental process
+    formerly unified in the pleasure ego is now split: its main stream is channeled
+    into the domain of the reality principle and brought into line with its
+    requirements. Thus conditioned, this part of the mind obtains the monopoly of
+    interpreting, manipulating, and altering reality -- of governing remembrance
+    and oblivion, even of defining what reality is and how it should be used and
+    altered. The other part of the mental apparatus remains free from the control
+    of the reality principle -- at the price of becoming powerless,
+    inconsequential, unrealistic.
+    Whereas the ego was formerly guided and driven by the whole  of its mental
+    energy, it is now to be guided only by that part of it which conforms to the
+    reality principle. This part and this part alone is to set the objectives,
+    norms, and values of the ego; as reason  it becomes the sole repository of
+    judgment, truth, rationality; it decides what is useful and useless, good and
+    evil. 2 Phantasy  as a separate mental process is born and at the same time
+    left behind by the organization of the pleasure ego into the reality ego.
+    Reason prevails: it becomes unpleasant but useful and correct; phantasy remains
+    pleasant but becomes useless, untrue -- a mere play, daydreaming. As such, it
+    continues to speak the language of the pleasure principle, of freedom from
+    repression, of uninhibited desire and gratification -- but reality proceeds
+    according to the laws of reason, no longer committed to the dream language.
+
+## Unsublimated pleasure
 
     Smell and taste give, as it were, unsublimated pleasure per se (and unrepressed
     disgust). They relate (and separate) individuals immediately, without the
@@ -424,8 +601,25 @@ Superego:
     and to prevent spontaneous relationships and thènatural' animal -like
     expressions of such relations."
 
+### Art
+
+    Still, within the limits of the aesthetic form, art expressed, although in an
+    ambivalent manner , the return of the repressed image of liberation; art was
+    opposition. At the present stage, in the period of total mobilization, even
+    this highly ambivalent opposition seems no longer viable. Art survives only
+    where it cancels itself , where it saves its substance by denying its
+    traditional form and thereby denying reconciliation: where it becomes
+    surrealistic and atonal. 6 Otherwise, art shares the fate of all genuine human
+    communication : it dies off.
+
     [...]
 
+    In a less sublimated form, the opposition of phantasy to the reality principle
+    is more at home in such sub-real and surreal processes as dreaming,
+    daydreaming, play, the "stream of consciousness."
+
+### Misc
+
     But, again, Freud shows that this repressive system does not really solve the
     conflict. Civilization plunges into a destructive dialectic: the perpetual
     restrictions on Eros ultimately weaken the life instincts and thus strengthen
@@ -568,3 +762,33 @@ Superego:
     whole, whose existence is its denial. This foe appears as the archenemy and
     Antichrist himself : he is everywhere at all times ; he represents hidden and
     sinister forces, and his omnipresence requires total mobilization.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Being is essentially the striving for pleasure. This striving becomes an "aim"
+    in the human existence: the erotic impulse to combine living substance into
+    ever larger and more durable units is the instinctual source of civilization.
+    The sex instincts are life  instincts: the impulse to preserve and enrich life
+    by mastering nature in accordance with the developing vital needs is originally
+    an erotic impulse.
+    Ananke is experienced as the barrier against the satisfaction of the life
+    instincts, which seek pleasure, not security. And the "struggle for existence"
+    is originally a struggle for pleasure: culture begins with the collective
+    implementation of this aim. Later, however, the struggle for existence is
+    organized in the interest of domination: the erotic basis of culture is
+    transformed. When philosophy conceives the essence of being as Logos, it is
+    already the Logos of domination -- commanding, mastering, directing reason, to
+    which man and nature are to be subjected Freud' s interpretation of being in
+    terms of Eros recaptures the early stage of Plato's philosophy, which conceived
+    of culture not as the repressive sublimation but as the free
+    self-development of Eros. As early as Plato, this conception appears as an
+    archaic-mythical residue. Eros is being absorbed into Logos, and Logos is
+    reason which subdues the instincts.
+    The history of ontology reflects the reality principle which governs the world
+    ever more exclusively: The insights contained in the metaphysical notion of
+    Eros were driven underground. They survived, in eschatological distortion, in
+    many heretic movements, in the hedonistic philosophy. Their history has still
+    to be written -- as has the history of the transformation of Eros in Agape. 29
+    Freud's own theory follows the general trend: in his work, the rationality of
+    the predominant reality principle supersedes the metaphysical speculations on
+    Eros.