Remembering as Reparation: Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory

292 Pages·2017·3.803 MB·English

by  Karl Figlio (auth.)

REMEMBERING
AS REPARATION
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL MEMORY
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KARL FIGLIO
Studies in the Psychosocial
Series editors
Stephen Frosh
Dept of Psychosocial Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
London, United Kingdom
Peter Redman
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Wendy Hollway
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Psychosocial Studies seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic and
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Karl Figlio
Remembering as
Reparation
Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory
Karl Figlio
University of Essex
Essex, UK
Studies in the Psychosocial
ISBN 978-1-137-59590-4 ISBN 978-1-137-59591-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59591-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949537
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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To my wife, Stina
Acknowledgements
I want to thank the following people, who have helped me with this
book.
Geoff Eley has been a generous advisor and correspondent on the his-
torical dimension of and sources for my thesis. Claudia Jerzak, Hedda
Joyce and Steffen Kruger have read and commented on parts of the book,
clarifying issues concerning German anti-memorial work, guilt and right-
wing extremism. I have enjoyed and benefitted from discussions on per-
sonal involvement in scholarship with Dave Bell, Matt ffytche and
Michael Roper, in our ‘Essex Project’, and with Roger Frie, in discovering
our common interest in psychoanalysis and German history. I have also
benefitted from discussions with the German Historical Group, formed
by several analysts, historians and philosophers in London with a deep
interest in this area. Over many years, as a friend and colleague, Bob
Hinshelwood has commented on and discussed various papers and pre-
sentations that were predecessors to this book.
I want to express my special gratitude to Stina Lyon, who has contrib-
uted to every aspect of my project, from its inception to this book, and to
Ronald Britton, who has informed every level of my thinking.
Two published papers were earlier attempts to formulate my thesis,
and material from them can be found throughout the book. I want to
thank Wiley for permission to draw on ‘A Psychoanalytic Reflection on
Collective Memory as a Psychosocial Enclave: Jews, German National
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Identity and Splitting in German Psyche’, International Social Science
Journal, 62(203–204), 2011, pp. 161–77; and Johns Hopkins University
Press for permission to draw on ‘Psychoanalysis, Reparation and Historical
Memory’, American Imago 71(4), 2014, pp.  417–44, especially in
Chap. 9. Thanks also to Karnac for permission to draw for Chap. 4 on
‘The Dread of Sameness: Social Hatred and Freud’s “Narcissism of Minor
Differences”’, in Auestad, L. (ed.) Psychoanalysis and Politics: Exclusion
and the Politics of Representation, London: Karnac, 2012.
Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
‘The Ordeal’ by Edith Breckwoldt, St Nikolai Memorial, Hamburg, Germany [Photo
taken by Karl Figlio]
Plaque reads:
“Kein Mensch auf der ganzen Welt kann die Wahrheit verändern.
Man kann sie nur suchen, sie finden und ihr dienen.
Die Wahrheit ist an jedem Ort.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Translation:
No one in the world can change the truth.
One can only search for it, find it and serve it.
The truth is in every place.
[Translated by Joanna O’Neill]
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Th e Internal World 27
3 Psychoanalysis and the ‘Social Subject’ 45
4 Delusional Enemies 73
5 S olidarity, Catastrophe and Ambivalence 101
6 C onflicts of Remembering: The Historikerstreit 119
7 R emembering and Not-Remembering 145
8 Th e Unconscious Division of Germany 165
9 R eparation 185
xi