Arno Gruen

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Arno Gruen

1923–2015

Lit.

1. Der Hass wächst : Terror und "Krieg gegen das Böse" - was haben Osama Bin Laden und George W. Bush gemeinsam? / Arno Gruen. - In: Publik-Forum (2004), 6, S.50-57

2. Hass in der Seele : verstehen, was uns böse macht / Arno Gruen. - Freiburg im Breisgau : Herder, 2001

Aufsätze 3. Der Fremde, das innere Opfer und die Bedrohung der Demokratie / Arno Gruen. - In: Wendepunkt 11. September 2001 (2001), S.65-79

Aufsätze 4. Woher kommt der Hass? : Seit dem 11. September wird die Frage, was Menschen böse macht, wieder öffentlich diskutiert; Doris Weber sprach darüber mit dem Schweizer Psychoanalytiker Arno Gruen / Arno Gruen. - In: Publik-Forum (2001), 20, S.35-40

0911 via ithf opac



“Violence Against the Self.” The Betrayal of the Self.

   Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women, by Arno Gruen, trans. 
   Hunter and Hildegarde Hannum. (NY: Grove Press, 1988.) 
   Published in The Bloomsbury Review, March / April 1989.
   Arno Gruen’s thesis is that autonomy, which he defines as “that 
   state of integration in which one lives in full harmony with one’s 
   feelings and needs,” is often in direct conflict with the needs of 
   society and the collective rules that govern adjustment and the 
   attainment of so-called success. Indeed, our cultural history is 
   largely composed of a “suppression of these feelings and the 
   needs they awaken.” The splitting-off of our most deeply felt 
   awareness and perception leads invariably to the danger of 
   violence against the authentic self. As Gaetano Benedetti warns 
   in his preface, “the roots of evil, of negativity, of 
   psychopathology” may be traced in part to this blocking of one’s 
   true inner nature. 


   Gruen identifies abstraction as one of the most destructive forces 
   governing the fragmentation of the self. We “glorify abstract 
   thought – at the expense of passion, enthusiasm, and 
   openness,” successfully avoiding the pain of encountering our 
   actual selves and fearing the broad emotional spectrum that 
   such an encounter entails. The participation of science in 
   abstraction’s almost total usurpation of all other core human 
   values has only further validated this growing “split between 
   intelligence and feeling” – this blind worship of rationalism, 
   which in turn threatens the preservation of authenticity. 
   Ironically, those who work hardest to preserve their psychic 
   authenticity are often “labeled as maladjusted and as failures.” 
   Among the so-called maladjusted are the prolific writer Henry 
   Miller and the renowned mystic/philosopher Meister Eckhart, as 
   well as many other notable artists and philosophers whom the 
   author quotes at length. 


   Gruen provides a solution to what reads in large part as an 
   anatomy of the terrors that one may feel when turning within 
   and facing the dark countenance of the secret self. Although we 
   may ultimately “develop a fear of fear itself,” we need to: 
   Discover that though our fear is of complete helplessness 
   – it is actually a helplessness pertaining to a specific 
   situation. It does not have to be equated with total 
   impotence and failure. Feeling helpless can instead lead 
   to a recognition of the limits of one’s influence and the 
   ability to accept interdependency.
   A shift in mental attitude away from a possible inflation of the 
   omnipotent ego toward the recognition of the significant “other” 
   - through the experience of rapport, empathy, and open-
   mindedness - is a theme that runs throughout this work. 


   Certain specialists as well as some general readers will no 
   doubt view Gruen's reinterpretation of Oedipus as being 
   somewhat provocative. He believes that "Our betrayal of what 
   we might have been, which lays the foundation of our 
   destructive tendencies in general, is determined by our 
   relationship with our mother." Yet he rejects what he calls the 
   Oedipal "myth," arguing: "it is neither love nor sexuality … that 
   makes a little boy in the Oedipal stage want to possess his 
   mother. Rather, this is brought about by her often unconscious 
   rejection of his authentic self." The child is thus motivated to 
   either "serve her - or to dominate her." All this, he adds, 
   is not to blame her, for in this regard she serves only as a 
   link to the father and to society, where the self is 
   predicated upon power as the sole worthwhile reality. 
   Gruen is to be lauded for the sincerity of his promulgation of 
   feeling and authenticity, particularly in an age when psychology 
   has had less to do with the study of the soul than with the 
   obsessive and soulless accounting of extroverted patterns of 
   human behavior. Yet there are dangers, even destructive ones, 
   in this approach, which rings of a literalness and a one-
   sidedness that one all too often observes in a therapist's 
   identification with the victim. It remains, for instance, of vital 
   necessity to separate the personal, literal mother from both the 
   "introjected" mother and from the idealized or archetypal 
   mother. Both the reality of internal nurturing - of assuming the 
   role of a mother to one's self - and the overall reality of the 
   psychic mother complex are points of view that are not 
   mentioned here. The naïve or general reader is left only with a 
   personal notion of "mother" and of "society" where a discussion 
   of an "inner" psychic mother or father, and of the "inner" psychic 
   determinants of society are necessary if the authenticity of the 
   self is to be at all preserved.  


   Authenticity to the self and to one's feelings are also, ultimately, 
   non-rational categories of being, and if one is to isolate them, or 
   rather, "rescue" them (as Gruen seems to be doing) from 
   psychiatric orthodoxy, then that rescue must also entail a non-
   rational treatment. Here, instead, the author falls back upon a so-
   called logical treatment that protects and defends our needs for 
   feeling and self-expression through a method which is itself 
   destructive because of its concreteness and literalism - its 
   assigning of every problem to some outer causality located in (or 
   projected upon) society. But what is society? What is its psychic 
   root? Statements such as "there are societies, such as the 
   African Ituri … or the Yequana in the Venezuelan jungle, where 
   men are whole human beings. But in our society they are not," 
   explain nothing, and are, at the very least, highly questionable. 
   The "noble savage" seems to haunt this argument, as does that 
   all-too-modern spirit that, under the guise of an anything-goes 
   "feminism," denigrates "all men" to be guilt of one thing and "all 
   women" to be in possession of a multiplicity of heroic and 
   endearing traits. Tied up with the Oedipal drama, Gruen tells us, 
   "is the male conception of possession of power that comes into 
   play." 
   Men think of themselves in a logical, orderly way without 
   realizing that it crushes their spontaneity, which they 
   have grown to fear.
   As a man who has to rely on spontaneity and the illogical, 
   strangely ordered flow of the unconscious in the act of writing, 
   in creativity, and in life itself, I've long grown tired of such 
   superficial generalizations about men and women, mothers and 
   fathers, even individuals and societies, whether they appear in 
   political discourse, in works of psychology, or in supercilious 
   dinner table conversations. "Men are deeply tormented by 
   doubts about their superiority," and "women who are true to 
   themselves - that is, who are in touch with their own authentic 
   life-forces - are never in favor of war" - it all begins to read like a 
   trivial pursuit in an age of generalizations that has itself 
   damaged the individual through omission of a higher 
   psychological understanding and a more complex and mature 
   analysis. So what begins as a refreshing call to inner truth 
   unravels in a welter of simplistic assertions that undercut their 
   own validity. 


   Had Gruen followed his own stated philosophy of uncovering the 
   voice that is individual and unique to the self – the creative 
   impulse at the core of the psyche toward which one is always 
   striving – then his goal of propelling the reader toward a 
   genuine experience of this inner authenticity might have been 
   more convincingly accomplished. As it now stands, The Betrayal 
   of the Self is a summons to the creative but surely not an 
   example of it. 

aus listex in anno olim. re:read am 250718


ZIST Buchtipp

Arno Gruen:

Der Verlust des Mitgefühls – Über die Politik der Gleichgültigkeit

"Arno Gruen, Psychoanalytiker und Autor (1923–2015), beschreibt, wie unsere Erziehung durch die Unterdrückung ureigener Lebensimpulse des Kindes zu tiefen Verletzungen und Schuldgefühlen führt, empathische Anteile im Selbst abgespalten werden und so – wenn sich der Erwachsene dieses Mechanismus nicht bewusst wird – die Fähigkeit zur Empathie verkümmern lässt. Das Buch mag entwicklungspsychologisch in die Jahre gekommen sein, es enthält aber zentrale Gedanken, die in meinen Augen für unser Menschsein nach wie vor von Bedeutung sind, die der Selbstreflexion dienen und auch eine eindringliche Ermutigung dafür sind, uns selbst und den Kindern das Fühlen zu erlauben." (Bunda S. Watermeier)

AUS DEM INHALT: „Jesus leitete eine Revolte des Herzens und des Mitgefühls ein. Das Einfühlen in den Schmerz und das Leid macht das Böse unmöglich. Wenn aber Schmerz vom Bewusstsein ausgeschlossen ist, dann wird dieser Schmerz zum Fundament einer Rache am Schmerz selbst, die ihren Ausdruck in der Zerstörung von Mensch und Natur findet. Darin liegt der Urgrund unserer Krankheit und nicht in den wirtschaftlichen, politischen und religiösen Ideologien, die wir zum Vorwand unserer gegenseitigen Zerstörung nehmen. Die Verneinung des wahren Schmerzes in unserer Kindheit führt zu einer sich wiederholenden Tautologie unseres Denkens, zu der Vorstellung, dass es nur um bessere Denkmodelle gehe, das heißt um besseres soziologisches oder wirtschaftliches Denken, damit wir auf einem fortschrittlichen Kurs bleiben. Das jedoch schreibt nurmehr die Unterdrückung unseres Mitgefühls fort und verhindert damit die Besinnung auf unser Menschsein, …“ (Seite 166).

dtv, ISBN 978-3-423-35140-9

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