From: "Orion Anderson" <libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net> To: <nietzsche-AT-driftline.org> Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:21:51 -0400 Subject: [Nietzsche] Nationalism and Symbiotic Fantasy LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE NEWSLETTER NATIONALISM AS SYMBIOTIC FANTASY Psychologists recently have debated whether or not there is such a thing as a "symbiotic phase:" a time of development when the infant imagines that he or she is fused with the mother. Perhaps they are looking for love in all the wrong places. In the United States, we sing about America the beautiful with its spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountains and fruited plains. We sing about the land that we love with its mountains, prairies and oceans white with foam. Freud stated that originally the ego includes everything and only later separates off an external world from itself. Perhaps when people identify with their nations they have recovered the "all-embracing ego feeling." One doesn't need to look to childhood to study symbiotic fantasy. It is present in the world in which we live. This fantasy constitutes the ground of our being. When we bind with our nation and its national life, we plug into the delusion of an omnipotent, symbiotic connection to the world. So powerful is this fantasy-so deeply are we identified with it-that (like fish in an ocean) we barely perceive that we are living within it. When CNN beams down at us at the airline terminal, we don't conceive of what we see and hear as something separate from ourselves. That is us beaming down. In The Nation: A Study in Ideology and Fantasy, Richard Koenigsberg reflects upon the meaning of the most powerful political ideology of our time. What are the sources of this ideology? Why are we so certain that nations exist? Why are we willing to kill and die for these entities? One doesn't need to look to childhood: We may study ourselves by interrogating the meaning of those fantasies that we have projected into the world. The Fantasy of Oneness <http://www.ideologiesofwar.com/gfx/tn_s.gif> NOW AVAILABLE AT A SPECIAL PRICE: THE NATION: A Study in Ideology and Fantasy FOR INFORMATION <https://www.ideologiesofwar.com/forms/payment/> ON ORDERING CLICK HERE Reviews of THE NATION: A Study in Ideology and Fantasy "A truly bold and provocative treatise. The nation is seen as the symbolic embodiment of a communal narcissistic ego, cleansed of the 'badness' introduced by a particular class of persons within a nation's boundaries whose 'removal' by whatever means is easily rationalized if goodness is to be restored. The interpretations are intriguing and illuminating, the scholarship creative and careful." -Political Psychology "I wish to acknowledge the remarkable research of Koenigsberg." -Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel in the Int'l. Review of Psychoanalysis The Fantasy of Oneness <http://www.ideologiesofwar.com/gfx/fo_s.gif> NOW AVAILABLE AT A SPECIAL PRICE: THE FANTASY OF ONENESS AND THE STRUGGLE TO SEPARATE: Towards a Psychology of Culture FOR INFORMATION <https://www.ideologiesofwar.com/forms/payment/> ON ORDERING CLICK HERE "A very thoughtful and perceptive analysis of the interplay of unconscious phantasy and cultural phenomena." -Thomas Ogden, M.D., author, The Matrix of the Mind "I was excited and very impressed by this fascinating book." -Frances Tustin, author, Autistic Barriers in Neurotic Patients "I am very much intrigued by Koenigsberg's psychoanalytic theory of culture. I find a strong element of truth in what he has expressed. I want to emphasize the great pleasure I experienced in reading this book and finding it so thought-provoking." -Bernard L. Pacella, M.D., former President, American Psychoanalytic Association _______________________________________________ List address: nietzsche-AT-driftline.org Admin interface: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/nietzsche-driftline.org
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