Safety Valves of the Psyche: Reading Freud on Aggression, Morality, and Internal Emotions

This article argues for a Freudian theory of internal emotion, which is best characterised as key “safety valves of the psyche”. After briefly clarifying some of Freud’s metapsychology, I present an account regarding the origin of (self-)censorship and morality as internalised aggression. I then show how this conception expands and can be detailed through a defence of a hydraulic model of the psyche that has specific “safety valves” of disgust, shame, and pity constantly counteracting specific sets of Freudian drives. This model is important for explicating Freud’s crucial concept of sublimation, which continues to have key therapeutic and normative relevance today, which I show through the case of jokes. I finish with the argument that largely happy, productive lives can be seen as in a dynamic between the release of too much (perversion) and too little (neurosis) psychical pressure through these mechanisms.

Reinterpreting Psychoneurosis to Ascertain Mass Pathology in Civilized Society

During the psychoanalytic discovery and investigation of Psychoneurosis, theoretical scaffoldings offered by Freudian theory were expansive and rich but still incomplete. Amongst the Neo–Freudians, Fromm began unearthing the psychopathology of the society under the heavy influence of Marx. Fromm remarked that the grown-up patient was not a child but an alienated adult who was seen as the neurotic. Feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness and inhibition occurred because the patient did not experience himself as the subject and originator of his own acts and experiences. Alienation had thus caused the neuroses to occur. Ushering in ‘spiritual liberation’ along with complete change of the ‘economic social constellation’ for Fromm were the necessary prerequisites before envisioning a cure of societal pathologies rooted in the contemporary mode of production. Freud on the other hand was sceptical about the application of psychoanalysis to civilization. He ringed in caution to the application of systems of knowledge developed at the individual level when projected to more global levels. Diagnosis of a “collective neurosis” would be tedious since no starting point associated with its development could emerge as the fixation point. Another hurdle that needed to be addressed according to Freud was that even if a substantial system of knowledge did take shape its implementation would be a herculean task. It would take great skill and courage to compel a community to become aware of its blind spots and become available to therapy. Thus, the growth and development of Psychoneurosis had charted a trajectory from the unexplored abysmal depths of the psyche to the more gross levels of societal productions. This paper attempts to establish links between the classic concept of Psychoneurosis and the larger gamut of modern-day society’s psychic reflections.

Fight Club

At the very beginning of Fight Club, the Platonic critique of art and everyday life is echoed when the nameless protagonist, the Edward Norton character, says that with insomnia “nothing’s real. Everything’s far away. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.” With that clear invitation, this chapter argues that Fincher intends a conversation with the Platonic critique of appearances. Fight clubs—in their retreat from the world and providing for meaningless but intense feeling—are to be understood as allegories of works of art in a consumer society that enable temporary release from it through pain induced enlivenment. Fight Club goes on to track how a political aesthetic can topple into fascist aestheticized politics. Finally, enlisting T. W. Adorno’s “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” the chapter argues that the bond between the charismatic Tyler Durden / Brad Pitt character and his fascist followers is deeply akin to that between Donald Trump and his followers.

Alone., Again

The Austrian experimental filmmaker Martin Arnold (b. 1959) created several late twentieth-century films that take a formal, interventionist approach to the use of found footage. This chapter explores how Arnold’s filmic inventions are made possible by his metaformal interventions at the level of medium—not in or on it, but instead with it. Such an approach counters a prevailing trend toward reading the resulting works, conspicuously Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998), as being inherently, that is, ontologically psychoanalytic in nature. I suggest, on the contrary, that while the film’s somatic effects on viewers may summon thoughts of Freudian theory, such interpretations are not part of the hidden or latent content of the original source films. We should, instead, acknowledge that such readings are epiphenomena of our charged emotional and psychosocial experience watching and listening to Arnold’s accomplished metacinematic creations.

Fifty Years On: Founding Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Fifty years after Freud’s death we feel the time has come to revisit epistemic assumptions and Freudian theory. The Italian Society of Relationship Psychoanalysis (S.I.P.Re) is about to launch a new psychoanalytic journal, open to all, as a space for discussion, exchange, and research. It is generally known that Freud was the greatest contributor to the study of psychic distress in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is appropriate to look to Freud, then, for the theoretical and technical basis for psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the aim of making psychoanalysis practicable for neuroses and psychoses, in the private and public sectors. Our study and research efforts are channeled towards Ricerca Psicoanalitica as the tangible result of the project.