The history,origin, and meaning of Nietzsche’s slave revolt in morality

Abstract

While it is uncontroversial that the slave revolt in morality consists in a denial of the nobles as objects of value, Nietzsche’s account in the Genealogy’s first essay invites ambiguities concerning its origin, ressentiment’s relationship to value creation, and its meaning. In this paper, I address these ambiguities by analyzing the morality of good and evil as an historical artifact of Judeo-Christian tradition, and I argue for a two-stage, non-strategic interpretation of the slave revolt, according to which Judaism and Christianity each made essential and different contributions. The inversion of values began with the Jewish prophets, who claimed the poor were holy and ‘good’ and the rich ‘evil’ (BGE 195), and it was sustained throughout the Second Temple period by the Jewish priests in relation to a ‘priestly-noble’ (GM I 7) conception of the virtuous person as holy and pure. Christ, through his espousal of egalitarianism (A 27), negated the pathos of distance essential to noble values, thus beginning the second phase of the slave revolt where goodness became associated with a distinctly slavish conception of virtue.     

The association between ruminative thinking and negative interpretation bias in social anxiety

Cognitive models propose that both, negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations and ruminative thoughts about social events contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety disorder. It has further been postulated that ruminative thoughts fuel biased negative interpretations, however, evidence is rare. The present study used a multi-method approach to assess ruminative processing following a social interaction (post-event processing by self-report questionnaire and social rumination by experience sampling method) and negative interpretation bias (via two separate tasks) in a student sample (n?=?51) screened for high (HSA) and low social anxiety (LSA). Results support the hypothesis that group differences in negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations in HSAs vs. LSAs are mediated by higher levels of post-event processing assessed in the questionnaire. Exploratory analyses highlight the potential role of comorbid depressive symptoms. The current findings help to advance the understanding of the association between two cognitive processes involved in social anxiety and stress the importance of ruminative post-event processing.     

Penultimate interpretation

Interpretation is at the center of psychoanalytic activity. However, interpretation is always challenged by that which is beyond our grasp, the 'dark matter' of our mind, what Bion describes as ' O'. O is one of the most central and difficult concepts in Bion's thought. In this paper, I explain the enigmatic nature of O as a high-dimensional mental space and point to the price one should pay for substituting the pre-symbolic lexicon of the emotion-laden and high-dimensional unconscious for a low-dimensional symbolic representation. This price is reification--objectifying lived experience and draining it of vitality and complexity. In order to address the difficulty of approaching O through symbolization, I introduce the term 'Penultimate Interpretation'--a form of interpretation that seeks 'loopholes' through which the analyst and the analysand may reciprocally save themselves from the curse of reification. Three guidelines for 'Penultimate Interpretation' are proposed and illustrated through an imaginary dialogue.     

Leonardo's phantasy and the importance of Freud's slip: The role of the analyst's phantasies in applied psychoanalysis and in the analytic relation

In his paper on Leonardo, Freud made a slip. Referring to the bird which, according to one of Leonardo's memories, tossed its tail into the painter's mouth many times when he was a child, Freud replaced 'kite' with 'vulture'. It is widely accepted that this slip doesn't signifi cantly damage the whole of Freud's constructions on the paper, nevertheless, the part of his considerations relating to the meaning of 'vulture' should be discounted. In the author's view, this part of the Leonardo paper is necessary. Thanks to the slip Freud was able to reach a comprehension which otherwise would have been unattainable. Interpretation based on the vulture made possible the confi guration of a mother as 'daughter of the wind', as was the case not only with Leonardo's mother but also with Freud's. Interpretation of Leonardo's phantasy was achieved through Freud's unconscious identifi cation with Leonardo and the slip adequately interpreted becomes the evidence of this. Through identifi cation, Freud succeeded in making sense of Leonardo's memory but also in realising an indirect virile possession of his own 'winged' mother. Freud's position as interpreting subject in his paper on Leonardo also has more general value: the analyst's knowledge about the 'other' has a very important basis in the indirect expression of his unconscious wishes within the fi eld of sense. The author uses clinical material in order to show how the analyst's phantasies play an important role in analytical interpretive work.     

'You’re Being Unreasonable’: Prior and Passing Theories of Critical Discussion

A key and continuing concern within the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is how to account for effective persuasion disciplined by dialectical rationality. Currently, van Eemeren and Houtlosser offer one response to this concern in the form of strategic manoeuvring. This paper offers a prior/passing theory of communicative interaction as a supplement to the strategic manoeuvring approach. Our use of a prior/passing model investigates how a difference of opinion can be resolved while both dialectic obligations of reasonableness and rhetorical ambitions of argumentative success are simultaneously accommodated. The paper explores the model with particular reference to the pragma-dialectical rules of critical discussion, strategic manoeuvring and fallacious reasoning.     

Vestibular influence on auditory metrical interpretation

When we move to music we feel the beat, and this feeling can shape the sound we hear. Previous studies have shown that when people listen to a metrically ambiguous rhythm pattern, moving the body on a certain beat--adults, by actively bouncing themselves in synchrony with the experimenter, and babies, by being bounced passively in the experimenter's arms--can bias their auditory metrical representation so that they interpret the pattern in a corresponding metrical form [Phillips-Silver, J., & Trainor, L. J. (2005). Feeling the beat: Movement influences infant rhythm perception. Science, 308, 1430; Phillips-Silver, J., & Trainor, L. J. (2007). Hearing what the body feels: Auditory encoding of rhythmic movement. Cognition, 105, 533-546]. The present studies show that in adults, as well as in infants, metrical encoding of rhythm can be biased by passive motion. Furthermore, because movement of the head alone affected auditory encoding whereas movement of the legs alone did not, we propose that vestibular input may play a key role in the effect of movement on auditory rhythm processing. We discuss possible cortical and subcortical sites for the integration of auditory and vestibular inputs that may underlie the interaction between movement and auditory metrical rhythm perception.     

A case history: from traumatic repetition towards psychic representability

This paper is devoted principally to a case history concerning an analytic process extending over a period of almost ten years. The patient is B, who consulted the author after a traumatic episode. Although that was her reason for commencing treatment, a history of previous traumatogenic situations, including a rape during her adolescence, subsequently came to light. The author describes three stages of the treatment, reflected in three different settings in accordance with the work done by both patient and analyst in enabling B to own and work through her infantile and adult traumatic experiences. The process of transformation of traumatic traces lacking psychic representation, which was undertaken by both members of the analytic couple from the beginning of the treatment, was eventually approached in a particular way on the basis of their respective creative capacities, which facilitated the patient's psychic progress towards representability and the possibility of working through the experiences of the past. Much of the challenge of this case involved the analyst's capacity to maintain and at the same time consolidate her analytic posture within her internal setting, while doing her best to overcome any possible misfit (Balint, 1968) between her own technique and the specific complexities of the individual patient. The account illustrates the alternation of phases, at the beginning of the analysis, of remembering and interpretation on the one hand and of the representational void and construction on the other. In the case history proper and in her detailed summing up, the author refers to the place of the analyst during the analytic process, the involvement of her psychic functioning, and the importance of her capacity to work on and make use of her countertransference and self-analytic introspection, with a view to neutralizing any influence that aspects of her 'real person' might have had on the analytic field and on the complex processes taking place within it.     

My heart is on my tongue: the untranslated self in a translated world

Abstract: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the first body to provide translation in all the languages of the country, setting people free from groping around with distorted tongues, unable to see, talk or hear one another … After three centuries of silence South Africans could daily hear the black voice talking and being translated; for the first time white South Africans could hear and listen. Through translation we could access our deepest emotions and feelings. But among the two thousand testimonies there were some that were incomprehensible, that confirmed every racial stereotype built up over many years of apartheid. What does one do with these ‘untranslatable’ narratives? This paper looks at one TRC testimony and one Bushmen story, both of them translated from indigenous languages and both posing enormous moral dilemmas. Read in a particular way, the Bushmen story seems to say that they had no sense of responsibility. I will look at the story in its cultural context as revealed through translation to see if another conclusion is possible. In the TRC testimony, I and two colleagues looked at the slippages between the original Xhosa testimony and the interpreted version and explore the consequences thereof. I want to make the point that a narrative can be experienced as discriminatory and ethically problematic when read through a particular, in this case a western, perspective. But the moment there is an attempt to interpret the narrative via its embeddedness in an indigenous worldview, it becomes breathtakingly ethical, fair and logical.     

Creativity and oedipal fantasy in Austen's Emma: 'An ingenious and animating suspicion'

Austen's Emma is one of the great novels of the Western tradition. In this paper the author explores the meaning of Emma's 'ingenious and animating suspicion' that Jane Fairfax seduced her best friend's husband, Mr Dixon. The interpretation that a psychoanalytic understanding makes possible shows how this suspicion represents an oedipal fantasy projected on to Miss Fairfax. Further exploration demonstrates how the fantasy is linked both to Emma's systematic unkindness to Jane Fairfax and to Emma's famous insult to Jane's aunt, Miss Bates. Emma's suspicion projects an oedipal fantasy with its incestuous impulses on to her rival and satisfies an envious aggression at the same time. The author's purpose in this paper is to bring to light through psychoanalytic understanding Austen's dramatisation of the complexity and creativity of the oedipal situation. In addition to the regression in oedipal fantasy, the primary process also functions with a progressive quality that expands and enriches the ego, a double movement described in Keats's 'negative capability', which has been elaborated by Bion. The primal-scene fantasies are often brought alive in the analytic transference. These situations and painful emotions are dramatically portrayed through Austen's genius as vehicles for change. A sudden integration follows a phase of disorganization: 'It darted through her with the speed of an arrow. Mr Knightley must marry no-one but herself'. Emma, who is Austen's 'imaginist', moves from the projected fantasy of the sad love triangle through envy aggression and the narcissistic blows of self-doubt and loss of love to moments of illumination and connection.