Category: Psyche

Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History

Alan Gullette
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Fall 1979
Psychology 4103: Independent Study
Dr. Shrader

In Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Wesleyan, 1959), Norman Brown carries the work of Freud to its logical conclusions in an attempt to arrive at a general psychoanalytic theory of history and culture. Making certain adjustments and reinterpretations of Freud’s theories, Brown replaces Freud’s pessimistic instinctual dualism with an instinctual dialectic that opens up the possibility of a solution to the problem of human neurosis. He takes us through the theory of repression, the development of Freud’s theories of the instincts, the stages of infantile sexuality, and the important theories of sublimation and fantasy. Finally, Brown offers a “way out” through the reunification of the life and death instincts, a cessation of repression, and the “resurrection of the body” though the reinstatement of the natural Dionysian body-ego.

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Health At Every Size (HAES): A new paradigm for weight:

Health At Every Size (HAES): A new paradigm for weight

There are many factors to consider when examining the relationship between weight and health. There is a discrepancy between what is regarded by the media and the community to represent the ‘ideal’ body type and the level at which excess weight provides a significant health risk. Eating Disorders Victoria (EDV) maintains that, for people at moderate levels of overweight, the dangers of excessive dieting, poor body image and eating disorders far outweigh the majority of physical health concerns.

Alice Miller obituary | Science | The Guardian
Sue Cowan-Jenssen http://www.guardian.co.uk

Alice Miller, who has died aged 87, was an influential and controversial figure in the world of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Her first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979), sold millions worldwide. A Freudian analyst, she described how a child’s need for love was often exploited by parents in order to meet the parent’s own unmet needs. Unable to express their true feelings, these children grow up unhappy and depressed, out of touch with their real selves.

In For Your Own Good (1980), she introduced the concept of “poisonous pedagogy” to describe the child-rearing practices that were so prevalent in Europe, especially before the second world war. She believed that the pain inflicted on children – “for their own good” – was unconsciously the parent re-enacting the trauma that had been inflicted on them when they were children. Thus the cycle of trauma continued down the generations.

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