Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Apathy, and Hope: A Response to Harris and Howard

This article contemplates the tension between apathy and hope, between the dystopic and the utopian as drivers of the human condition, and our theories about it. I look, more specifically, at how these two tendencies manifested in the aftermath of WWI; the dystopic in Freud’s invention of the death drive, the utopian in Ernst Bloch’s exploration of hope. I argue that our present poses a challenge similar to that posed by WWI; a collapse of the frameworks around which subjectivities and societies are organized, and a potential for the development of both better and worse outlooks. I argue that as was the case then, psychoanalysis has crucial theoretical and ethical choices to make. I suggest that rather than follow Freud’s death driven fatalism, we should seek inspiration in Bloch’s view of hope as a driving force of human experience and destiny. I contemplate these ideas as I record events taking place in the world and in my practice during the weeks just before and after the 2020 elections in the US.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07351690.2021.1944776