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
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“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.
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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).
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