Psychoanalytic Inquiry

Waugaman, Elisabeth

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192381pmid: N/A

This article is the result of my attempts to dialogue with gun advocates beginning with blogs about gun control for Psychology Today Online in 2012, after the Aurora shootings. A review of American history and popular culture in film provides insights into why so many Americans distrust national government, why there is so much fear of “the other,” why there is so much anger, and why Americans are so obsessed with guns. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War created an inherent suspicion of government that still persists, and the country evolved an ongoing fear of the other beginning with Native Americans and slavery, which has continued with fear of the Mafia after WWI, fear of communists after WWII, fear of Muslims after 9/11, and fear of “illegal aliens” after the most recent recession. American film developed while the country was still fighting Native Americans. The industry was influenced by war documentaries and strains to maintain audiences with ever-increasing violence and special effects. Creating a dialogue with gun advocates requires maintaining clear boundaries and constant awareness of historical and cultural fears, myth, repression, splitting, and narcissism.

Lothane, Henry Zvi

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192384pmid: N/A

Violence has been increasing the world over ever since Sigmund Freud addressed the horrors of mass violence in WWI. I analyze the various manifestations of violence by individuals killing themselves or other persons, or individuals acting as mass or serial murderers, let alone terrorist groups kidnapping, maiming, or massacring persecuted populations. Violence is first addressed in relation to aggression and theories about aggression. Both violence and aggression are related to the phenomenon of power, insufficiently addressed by Freud, who also rejected Alfred Adler’s views on aggression and power. Following Buber, the evil of violence is connected to the evil of lying, another subject about which Freud said little but which was addressed by his faithful followers Sandor Ferenczi and Sandor Feldman. Issues of aggression, power, and violence are coordinated with the role of feelings and emotions in the life of individuals, couples, groups, and masses as seen from the perspective of dramatology, a method that focuses on action and interaction in life, disorder, and therapy, and especially on enactments.

Nissim-Sabat, Marilyn

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192389pmid: N/A

The theme of this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry opens up an important field of inquiry. There is abundant and clear evidence that violence is glorified in our culture, and around the world as well. The critically important question is: Why is violence glorified, and how can we prevent both violence and its glorification? These issues are addressed in this article in the form of the following question: How is it that so many people in our culture conclude that they do not have other, nonviolent, nonaddictive options for meeting their profound human need for the feeling of well-being? This question is addressed here through an investigation of the role of the relationship between the options available to people and the actual choices that they make. I show that endemic failure to address this options-to-choice relationship in psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and philosophy is a factor in ongoing controversies in psychoanalytic theory and clinical theory as well as in philosophical psychology. I show further that (a) this failure has been a factor in our inability to understand and prevent violence, and (b) a phenomenological philosophical framework for psychoanalysis can point the way to greater insight into the problem of violence and its prevention.

Summers, Frank

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192392pmid: N/A

This article focuses on the glorification of violence in the United States and why there is such an attraction to violent images. The data on the impact of violent video games, movies, and television shows tend to focus on whether those images and scenes lead to aggressive behavior, but in this article I highlight the fact that this research indicates that Americans are drawn to images and scenes of violent behavior. The U.S. citizenry does not simply react to what the media companies produce; it chooses video games and shows that contain violence. I address why this is in terms of American exceptionalism and draw the connection between that grandiose image of America and the glorification of violence across a wide range of the American population.

Twemlow, Stuart W.

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192399pmid: N/A

This article addresses the issue of why it is that United States of America glorifies violence and, at the same time, is scared of it, out of proportion to the country’s overwhelming world strength and influence. The article focuses initially on the need to own weapons of mass destruction beyond those needed for sports, including hunting. My psychoanalytic hypothesis suggests that there is a displacement of a fear of being seen by the world as altruistic and, therefore, feminine (castrated and weak); and a hypermasculine defensive façade is often adopted. A history of altruism as reflected in community attitudes is given together with several examples of how altruistic interventions can be very helpful both in schools and in community-wide interventions. The article is the first in a series that will explore altruism as a drive and important in individual analysis beyond its role as an ego defense.

Nayar-Akhtar, Monisha C.

doi: 10.1080/07351690.2016.1192403pmid: N/A

The relationship between media and violence is a complex and perplexing one. A sample of the numerous statistics and studies on this subject illustrates growing developmental implications (as in children who view media violence are more likely to be aggressive), socio-cultural influences (increasing portrayals of real-life violence), as well as political involvement (leaders of a nation asking for the Entertainment Industry to not glorify gun violence). Finally, increasing difficulties in discerning fantasy and real life suggests that at an intrapsychic level, a core function of imaginative play (Winnicott, 1971), an essential ingredient of childhood development, may also be further compromised. Yet, although the escalation of violence in and by the media is ubiquitous and undeniable, it is also true that not all individuals exposed to such violence act upon it, nor do they experience all the developmental challenges as illuminated by research data. Furthermore, significant variations in both cultural and individual expression of violence suggests that other factors more pertinent to intrapsychic functioning, as well as group processes, may also be at play. Last, cyberspace technology has substantially altered the playing field for the depiction of violence with some interesting results. These concerns will be explored in this article.