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Sigmund Freud

by
Dean Gotcher

"'It is not really a decisive matter whether one has killed one's father or abstained from the deed,' if the function of the conflict and its consequences are the same." (Sigmund Freud in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)

"The impact of Sigmund Freud's work on modern culture ...the connection between the suppression of children (both within the home and outside) ... the psychological dynamics of the life of the child and the adult alike."   (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality)

"'... The conflict between civilization and sexuality is caused by the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people,... whereas civilization is founded on relations between large groups of persons....  In no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of his being, his aim of making one out of many; but when he has achieved it in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he is not willing to go further.'"  (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)

"... the hatred against patriarchal suppression—a 'barrier to incest,' ... the desire (for the sons) to return to the motherculminates in the rebellion of the exiled sons, the collective killing and devouring of the father, and the establishment of the brother clan,"  (Herbart Marcuse explaining Freud's historiography in his book, Eros and Civilization: a psychological inquiry into Freud)

"Narcissus and Dionysus are closely assimilated in the Orphic mythology.... identity of the one and the many [that is] reunification of God and world, [replacing it with] man and nature..."  "Orpheus rejects the normal Eros ... the repressive order of procreative sexuality [to preserve family and society, i.e. the "old world order"]... for a fuller Eros ... the negation of all order [where the child's/man's incestuous nature is 'liberated' from the father's/Father's authority, i.e. the "new world order" where non-repressive Eros (unrestrained "human nature," i.e., abomination) prevails]." (Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)

"Freud noted that patricide and incest are part of man's deepest nature."  (Irvin Yalom, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy)

"'Imagination envisions the reconciliation of the individual with the whole, of desire with realization, of happiness with reason.'" (Sigmund Freud in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)

"'Every renunciation ... becomes a ... conscience; every fresh abandonment of gratification increases its severity and intolerance ... every impulse of aggression which we omit to gratify is taken over by the super-ego and goes to heighten its aggressiveness (against the ego).'  'That which began in relation to the father ends in relation to the community.'" (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud)

"A stranger, even if his name were God, who imposes commands upon us must be resisted, he must be killed because nobody can stand him." (Paul Tillich in Leonard F. Wheat, Paul Tillich's Dialectical Humanism)

". . . a tendency to transmit mainly a set of conventional rules and customs, may be considered as interfering with the development of a clear-cut personal identity in the growing child." Theodor Adorno  The Authoritarian Personality The author and book Bloom uses to justify his Taxonomies.

"We are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do." "The most important symptom of the defeat in the fight for oneself is the guilty conscience." (Erick Fromm,  Escape from Freedom )

"Freud, Hegel, and Nietzsche are, like Marx, compelled to postulate external domination and its assertion by force in order to explain repression."  "The repression of normal adult sexuality is required only by cultures which are based on patriarchal domination."  "The abolition of repression would only threaten patriarchal domination." (Norman O. Brown,  Life Against Death)

"If Freud's hypothesis is not corroborated by any anthropological evidence, it would have to be discarded altogether  ... except for the fact that it telescopes, in a sequence of catastrophic events, the historical dialectic of domination ... elicits aspects of civilization hitherto unexplained." "... the Freudian hypothesis ... does not lead back to the image of a paradise which man has forfeited by his sin against God ..."  "[... the Freudian hypothesis leads] to the domination of man by man." (Marcuse)

The difference between the conscience and Freud's "super-ego."  The conscience being the voice of the Father, the "super-ego" the voice of the many, i.e. "the village," i.e. society.

"If the guilt [the "guilty conscience" for disobeying the Father's commands, rules, facts, and truth] accumulated in the civilized domination of man by man [reflected in the Father's authority over his children] can ever be redeemed by freedom [the children 'redeemed,' i.e. 'liberating' themselves from the Father's authority, 'reconciled' themselves back to the world], then the 'original sin' [the children determining what is right and what is wrong according to their own personal "feelings" and "thoughts" of the 'moment'] must be committed again: We must again eat from the tree of knowledge in order to fall back into the state of innocence [as the children were before their Father's first command and threat of chastening for disobedience (threat of being cast out for disrespecting his authority)]." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud

"The entry into Freud cannot avoid being a plunge into a strange world and a strange language―a world of sick men, ....It is a shattering experience for anyone seriously committed to the Western traditions of morality and rationality to take a steadfast, unflinching look at what Freud has to say. To experience Freud is to partake a second time of the forbidden fruit; and this book cannot without sinning communicate that experience to the reader." "Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness: open your eyes and look around you―madness is in the saddle anyhow." "It is possible to be mad and to be unblest, but it is not possible to get the blessing without the madness; it is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement," "I wagered my intellectual life on the idea of finding in Freud what was missing in Marx."  (Norman O. Brown, regarding his book Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)  

Mike Connor commenting on Brown and his work on Freud and Marx, at Browns funeral stated: "But Brown believed that the payoff was worth the price of sin—namely, that alienation would be overcome, and the return of the repressed completed, rendering problems of sin permanently moot. Life Against Death established Brown, along with his colleague and friend Herbert Marcuse, and later Charles Reich, as an intellectual leader of the New Left …. a Marxist mode of Freudian analysis. Brown's push to resurrect the human body with all its erotic urges freely expressed, resonated with the members of the Human Potential Movement and the undergrads they were influencing in the 60's." (March 23-30, 2005 issue of Metro Santa Cruz) 

As was put into praxis by the citizens of Sodom, i.e. abomination and the threat to harm any who got in their way of realizing it ("now will we deal worse with thee, than with them." Genesis 19:9), we find ourselves facing the same attitude from an ever escalating culture of abomination (initiated and sustained by the praxis of psychotherapy).

© Institution for Authority Research, Dean Gotcher 2012-2015