Unbridled! Thoughts on times of self-begetting and violence

Am J Psychoanal. 2021 Jul 19. doi: 10.1057/s11231-021-09298-8. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTMind is multi-levelled displaying an eons-long prehistory, while as Freud well knew civilization is new and frail: in biological evolution Thanatos long antecedes Eros. Complex intraspecies interchanges in higher animals proceeding by analogic communication give a firm place to Freudian Dingvorstellungen. Self-recognition and reflective thought come exceedingly late, in apes, requiring affectionate baby-mother mirroring. Deriving from inquiry on ego-dystonic neuroses, psychoanalysis must in the Age of Media deal with ego-syntonic pathologies sporting a demise of self-observation and self-reflection: borderline, autistic and autistoid disturbances. The 'epidemy of autism' offers fertile ground for very early psychoanalytic intervention, here briefly illustrated clinically. But on the other side, adolescent and post-adolescent disturbances cover a range going from autistoid retraction to more and more defiant if not violent protagonistic self-begettings, often propelled by overriding feelings of victimhood: filio-parental violence is the offshoot. Postmodernist ideologies accompany and fuel such trends.PMID:34282259 | DOI:10.1057/s11231-021-09298-8
Source: American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research