Michel Onfray and Freud

[M Winther]

French historian and philosopher Michel Onfray has in his
Counter-history of Philosophy delivered a critique Freud which builds on
the argument that he drew his theory (the Oedipal complex, etc.) from
his personal neurosis. His work is here criticized by historian
Elisabeth Roudinesco:
http://tinyurl.com/ou74guh
http://www.academia.edu/229531/Why_so_much_Hate_Onfray_and_anti-freudian_fantasy_by_Historian_Elisabeth_Roudinesco

My comment: Our age is replete with carrierist thinkers who fail to
understand a subject properly because their understanding is much too
shallow. Michel Onfray bites off more than he can chew. He has
shouldered the task of writing a critical history of the whole oeuvre of
Western thought, an enterprise which he should have left to better
minds.

Is the Oedipal complex a chimera that is only relevant to a little
portion of the population, most notably Freud? The Oeidipal complex is
central also in Jungian psychology, although it has a more general
significance. The "mother" in Jungian psychology signifies not merely
the personal mother. The 'state', for instance, can also be the carrier
of a mother projection. Thus, the subject can have an Oedipal relation
to the state, which he regards as the Mother and sees as an endless
cornucopia of boons. The subject develops an Oedipal relation to the
state and fears retaliation from the "father" in the form of the
authorities, such as the police, or the male figures in the population
who have a fatherly and masculine persona. These fatherly equivalents,
he believes, are driven by hatred and are out to kill him. At least,
they want to divest him of the symbiotic relation to the Mother, which
he has striven hard to attain, and which has allowed him to regress to
infantile dependence. These Oedipal individuals have all the
characteristics of little omnipotent kings.

Sweden, which is a motherly welfare state, is today infested with
Oedipal individuals, arriving here from all parts of the world. The
degree to which they satisfy the criteria of Oedipal psychology is
astounding. Thus, there is nothing essentially wrong with the Oedipal
theory, for anybody who has eyes to see. It is probably true that the
Oedipal theory is the fruit of Freud's own psychological attachment to
his personal mother and that he overestimated its significance in
personality development, with regards to the relation with the
*personal* mother. But it is certainly not overestimated if the Oedipal
relation is viewed in more general terms. It is also a factor in the
relation to spouses and other motherly equivalents, such as the welfare
state.

The Oedipal individual lives in terror of the "father" who is out to
kill him. His psychology is characterized by an enormous sensitivity to
infringement and offence, mostly imagined. In his mind, the father is
always out to take out his revenge on the son who has conquered the
mother. The average black man living in Sweden lives in terror of
natives on whom he projects the revengeful father. He is subject to
severe racist persecutions because the police has once asked him to show
his ID. Remember that this is a country in which a lone mother arriving
here with three children, typically an analphabeth from the Third World,
can get as much as $3,270(!) a month from day one, together with free
medical treatment, day nursery(!), etc. The authorities are baffled by
the difficulties they have in learning to read the clock and commit to
memory even a fragment of the language. What they don't realize is that
there is a strong incentive to remain infantile and dependent.

The males of some anglerfish species fasten themselves on a female,
which is considerably bigger, and fuse with her down to the blood-vessel
level. The male receives nutrients via their shared circulatory system,
and provides sperm to the female in return. The male's fishlike
appearance is reduced until it appears like a little parasite on the
mother fish's body.

I view this as the "Oedipus fish" that lives in fear of the retaliating
"father fish" who, with his sharp teeth, threatens to cut the son from
the body of the mother fish. In the human species, this destructive
figure is known as Thanatos, or the death drive. Since the symbiotic
condition is an impediment to individuation, it gives rise to a
destructive force that aims to sever the bond of son and mother. So the
darkest fear of the Oedipal person really derives from inside as the
underlying factor of projection. The dark father whispers in his ear
that he should destroy the object of his psychological attachment and
that he should make preparations for his own death, preferably in a
terrorist action. In the infantile individual the death motif is
archaic. Death means that he will turn into a 'spirit.' To become a
spirit means a freeing from the world. It means to finally sever the
bond of attachment that has impeded his maturation to a true individual.
This is why the death drive plays such a big role in the Oedipal
individual. In the Oedipus story, the mother Jocasta kills herself, and
Oedipus pokes out his eyes.

It is evident that Freud's notions in this field are highly valuable,
although he made an overly personalistic interpretation of the Oedipus.
It is not only relevant to the early years of childhood and youth. It is
universally applicable.

Mats Winther
http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/