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Created: November 26, 2001
Latest Update: November 26, 2001
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Sacrificial Self-Destructiveness

Journal entry for teaching essay by jeanne

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, and Individual Authors: November 2001.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on Fellman's concept of obsessive adversarialism. It starts out with two posts by Dr. Richard Koenigsberg, Director of the Library of Social Science, Elmsburg, New York.

On Monday, November 26, 2001, Richard Koenigsberg posted to the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society List:

In response to my recent contribution on "Sacrificial Self-Destructiveness," several persons requested clarification of my statement that the use of terms such as the death drive tended to obviate the MEANING inherent within political and religious violence.

When asked if he possessed or sought to possess weapons of mass destruction, Bin Laden replied:

"To seek to possess the weapons that could counter those of the infidels is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then this is an obligation I carried out and I thank God for enabling us to do that. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty."

Aggression is undertaken in the name of one's attachment to the object, a testimonial speaking to the depth of one's belief in the object's omnipotence. Violence represents a duty and moral obligation--the vehicle for demonstrating devotion.

The sound and fury of societal violence testifies to the existence of objects that transcend concrete human experience. Killing and dying occur in the name of proving that such objects exist.

Each person needs "something to believe in--thus human beings are deeply gratified by societal killing and dying. In a sense, the specific object for which dying and killing occurs does not matter. As long as some one, some where is willing to kill or die for some thing, this keeps hope alive.

The "death drive" is the wish to submit to the object--to prove the omnipotence of the object by demonstrating a willingness to die and kill in its name.

With regards,

Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.

The post illustrates the importance of our understanding the re-interpretation of classic theory. Freudian theory may seem so very long ago, psychoanalysis so very psychiatry-oriented, that we forget the importance of understanding the unconscious, drives, out-of-awareness beliefs and motivations.

Dr. Koenigsberg's post should make us aware that professionals everywhere are focussing on current events by asking what their professional tools offer by way of explanation. And, even though he is writing to fellow professionals, he carefully provides the definitions of his terms. Here's one example of how professionals use conceptual linking.

Dr. Koenigberg's earlier post, to which he refers in his most recent post above:

Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001
Subject: Unconscious Self-Destructiveness

On September 14, three days after the World Trade Center bombing, I posted a message entitled "Killing and Dying." I quoted Bin Laden who said: "I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God."

I suggested that if the first part of the drama was terror and aggression, the second part would be the "sacrificial dying." I observed that terror and aggression, on the one hand, and the sacrificial dying on the other were "two parts of the same script and cannot be separated." I said, "Now the second part of the drama begins."

Today on November 15, 2001, the drama moves toward its denouement.

The point I was making was that the motive for the murderous aggression undertaken by Bin Laden was unconscious masochism, his wish to sacrifice himself. >pAt the core of the human psyche is unconscious self-destructiveness. You can call it the death instinct or death wish if you prefer, but these terms tend to obviate the MEANING that inheres within this motive.

I also stated in my post that "The Japanese knew from the moment they attacked Pearl Harbor what the result would be." I was suggesting was that for the Japanese the masochistic fantasy of catastrophic self-destructiveness was there RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING, that the "ending was contained within the beginning."

Of course, on some level human beings understand this connection. A television show like COPS makes clear the relationship between aggressive acting out and masochistic self-destructiveness ("what you gonna do when they come for you, bad boy, bad boy, bad boy").

We sense this relationship between "aggression" and self-destructiveness, but we do not wish to say that we know of it. Why not?

With regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

Discussion Topics

  1. Dr. Koenigsberg poses some interesting questions. Is the masochism of self-destructiveness inescapable, as a death drive? Or does Gordon Fellman's concept of a paradigm shift seem more reasonable?

    jeanne's comments:

    This question reminds me of the conundrum in which I selected Habermas as our mentor. I certainly don't know whether Habermas's faith that we can salvage some part of the Enlightenment as we grope our way towards a global future is "right" or not. But he at least moves towards hope. And I need that hope.

    Fellman's paradigm shift also moves towards hope. I should prefer to believe that we can snuff out such destructive impulses or drives, even should they exist, in deference to the hope that we may build a future.

    What I am convinced that we must not do, is deny in complicity that any of these explanations might carry the key to further understanding. Good faith listening is one of the few tools I trust in our learning to live together.

  2. What do you think Dr. Koenigsberg means by "psychoanalysis has yet to be understood"?

    jeanne's comments:

    I'm still trying to think this question through myself. I'm thinking of:

    • conflict within us - between life and not-life.

      • I want to win. But dying, and ascending to a higher win might be the best alternative I can muster, especially if I'm losing at this point.
      • Next to winning big might be losing big. If I can't be the best guy around, maybe the worst guy around will get almost as much glory.
      • fear and awe are very close together. If not awe, then fear?

    • life is the prize - but if I have no chance at life, then not-life can be dressed up to look like a prize and deceive others, including maybe myself

    • maybe there is no prize - neither life, nor not-life - maybe it's all in the way we live it

    But none of this addresses the meaning of psychoanalysis. I think of Freud primarily in terms of the conflict between conscious/unconscious. conflicts we act out, though we may not be aware of them. a challenge to absolutely rational approaches to life. (Jonathan Lear). Wouldn't all this suggest that Fellman is right. That we ought to be able to shift our emphasis to an understanding that life as we live it in our respective lifeworlds is not all rational and neat and linear, and that we need to develop an awareness to that in our responses to Others?