Freud, the Contemporary Super-ego, and Western Morality : An Essay on Psychopolitics

Freud, the Contemporary Super-ego, and Western Morality traces the origins of the relationship between the morality of the super-ego and the destructive impulse of the death drive in the liberal democracies of the 21st century. Giosuè Ghisalberti begins by refuting the analysis by contemporary social theorists of the phenomenon described as "the return of the religious," presenting instead a comprehensive set of ideas as outlined by Freud in the writings of the 1920s and the analysis of a contemporary theological-political unconscious. Ghisalberti argues that the psyche of the liberal West has regressed to an infantile and primitive present, driven by an unconscious hostility towards the Oedipus complex and, more comprehensively, to Western civilization as a whole. The book re-examines Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas on the nature of obsessions, interpreted first from the murder of the primal father in Totem and Taboo , and turns to his grounding ideals of intelligence, creativity, and freedom as the affirmation of the coming-to-be-human in modernity. Freud, the Contemporary Super-ego, and Western Morality will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training. It will also be key reading for academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, philosophy, political theory and the humanities. CONTENTS WORKS CITED INTRODUCTION Notes THE REGRESSIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUPS (a) Love-Hate, Diminished Intelligence, Loss of Freedom (b) The 21st-Century Transformation of an Ego-Ideal (c) Hysterical Identification and Its Aftermath (d) The Primal Horde and the Individual Now Notes THE POWERS OF THE SUPER-EGO AND THE DEATH DRIVE (e) From the Psychology of Groups to Their Super-ego Pathologies (f) The Double Death-Drive of Morality (g) The Masochistic-Sadistic Bind (h) The Social and Political Gain from Neurotic Illness Notes THE PRESENT OF OUR ILLUSIONS (i) The Extra-Religious Dimension of Freud’s Analysis (j) Transferential Free-Association (k) The Revival of Infantile Defenses (l) The Disavowal of Reality and Splitting Notes THE MORAL COERCIONS OF LIBERALISM (m) “The Sorest Spot in Civilization” (n) The Inadequacy of Our Social Regulations (o) Love, Aggression, and the Neighbour as Our Enemy (p) Elusive but Not Impossible Happiness Notes AFTERWORD Note BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX