In:
Psychoanalyse im Widerspruch, Psychosozial-Verlag GmbH and Co. KG, Vol. 29, No. 2 ( 2018-01), p. 45-64
Abstract:
In »Civilization and Its Discontents«, published during the time of the world economic crisis and the emergence of fascism in 1930, Freud writes about the formation of uneasiness in culture or civilization through the control of the superego over aggressive, anti-humane tendencies of the ego. He attributes this to the introjection of aggressiveness or the absorption of aggressive drives in the superego. In the article this thought is continued by proposing that due to this absorption, the superego became a superego driven by desire, i.e. insatiable and phagocytic, controlling and capturing objects or their material substitutes. In this respect, there is both an oral and an anal coding of the demands, uttered both by a cultural, supra-individual superego and the individual superego. The capitalist self is displayed in the context of desire and control trough the exploitation of the middle class, the production of the wandering proletariat and the economic zoning of formerly state-run regions in Africa and the Middle East. The engine of the neoliberal globalized capitalism is privation: here where capitalism is mainly aimed at the accumulation of assets, it is a useful tool to form an alliance with the subject as an individual suffering from an insatiable privation. To conclude the article, possible solutions are discussed, considering also the scepticism of Freud and the propositions of Alain Badiou concerning a fourth subjectivity.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0941-5378
,
2699-1543
DOI:
10.30820/0941-5378-2017-2
DOI:
10.30820/0941-5378-2017-2-45
Language:
German
Publisher:
Psychosozial-Verlag GmbH and Co. KG
Publication Date:
2018
