Spring
2000

ISF100B

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Spring 2000 Quotes

Please read the following quotes. First, identify the respective authors of these quotes. In a paragraph, discuss the key issues raised in these paragraphs and place them into the conceptual framework and the larger works from they are taken.

1. "An analysis of lower middle?class people leaves no doubt about the importance of the relation between sexual life and the ideology of 'duty' and 'honor'."

2. "From a psychoanalytic point of view, it is unsatisfactory to merely attribute the pervasiveness of submission fantasies in erotic life to cultural labeling or the derogation of women."

3. "In early capitalism and in the large feudal societies of Asia the ruling class is not yet interested in a sexual suppression of the enslaved classes. It is when the materially suppressed classes begin to organize themselves, begin to fight for socio?political improvements and to raise the cultural level of the broad masses, that sexual?moralistic inhibitions set in. Only then does the ruling caste begin to show an interest in the 'morality' of the suppressed classes. Thus, parallel to the rise of the organized working class, a contrary process sets in, namely the ideological assimilation to the ruling class."

4. "Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world. In this, sublimation of the instincts lends its assistance. One gains the most if one can sufficiently heighten the yield of pleasure from the sources of physical and intellectual work. When that is so, fate can do little against one. A satisfaction of this kind, such as an artist's joy in creating, in giving his phantasies body, or a scientist's in solving problems or discovering truths, has a special quality which we shall certainly one day be able to characterize in metapsychological terms. At present we can only say figuratively that such satisfactions seem 'finer and higher'."

5. "The world which is given to the individual and which he must accept and take into account is, in its present and continuing form, a product of the activity of society as a whole. The objects we perceive in our surroundings? cities, villages, fields, and woods ?bear the mark of having been worked on by a man. It is not only in clothing and appearance, in outward form and emotional make?up that men are the product of history. Even the way they see and hear is inseparable from the social life?process as it has evolved over the millennia."

6. "The moral imperative that emerges repeatedly in interviews with women is an injunction to care, a responsibility to discern and alleviate the 'real and recognizable trouble' of this world. For men, the moral imperative appears rather as an injunction to respect the rights of others and thus to protect from interference the rights to life and self?fulfillment. Women's insistence on care is at first selfcritical rather than self protective, while men initially conceive obligation to others negatively in terms of noninterference. Development for both sexes would therefore seem to entail an integration of rights and responsibilities through the discovery of the complementarily of these disparate views. For women, the integration of rights and responsibilities takes place through an understanding of the psychological logic of relationships. This understanding tempers the self?destructive potential of a self?critical morality by asserting the need of all persons for care. For men, recognition through experience of the need for more active responsibility in taking care corrects the potential indifference of a morality of noninterference and turns attention from the logic to the consequences of choice."

7. "The race theory can be refuted only by exposing its irrational functions, of which there are essentially two: that of giving expression to certain unconscious and emotional currents prevalent in the nationalistically disposed man and of concealing certain psychic tendencies."

8. "At about the same time as the sexual life of children reaches its first peal, between the ages of three and five, they also begin to show signs of the activity which may be ascribed to the instinct for knowledge or research. 1 his instinct cannot be counted among the elementary instinctual components, nor can it be classed as exclusively belonging to sexuality. Its activity corresponds on the one hand to a sublimated manner of obtaining mastery, while on the other hand it makes use of the energy of scopophilia. Its relations to sexual life, however, are of particular importance, since we have learnt from psycho?analysis that the instinct for knowledge in children is attracted unexpectedly early and intensively to sexual problems and is in fact aroused by them."

9. "A good instance of the liberal, as he still exists in a relatively strong bourgeois community, presents a picture of freedom, openness, and good will. He knows himself to be the very opposite of a slave. Yet his sense of justice and his clarity of purpose operate within definite limits set by the economic mechanisms and do not find expression in an ordering of social reality as a whole."

10. "Our inquiry concerning happiness has not so far taught us much that is not already common knowledge. And even if we proceed from it to the problem of why it is so hard for men to be happy, there seems no greater prospect of learning anything new. We have given the answer already by pointing to the three sources from which our suffering comes: the superior power of nature, the feebleness of our own bodies and the inadequacy of the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state and society."

11. "In traditional theoretical thinking, the genesis of particular objective facts, the practical application of the conceptual systems by
    which it grasps the facts, and the role of such systems in action, are all taken to be external to the theoretical thinking itself. This alienation, which finds expression in philosophical terminology as the separation of value and research, knowledge and action, and other polarities, protects the savant from the tensions we have indicated and provides an assured framework for his activity."

12. "We can no longer conceal from ourselves what exactly it is that this whole process of willing, inspired by the ascetic ideal, signifies this hatred of humanity, of animality, of inert matter; this loathing of the sense of reason even; this fear of beauty and happiness; the longing to escape from illusion, change, becoming, death, and from longing itself: It signifies, let us have the courage to face it, a will to nothingness, a revulsion from life, a rebellion against the principal conditions of living. And yet, despite everything, it is and remains a will. Let me repeat, now that I have reached the end, what I said at the beginning: a man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose ...."

13. "With the exception of dissidents like Karen. Homey, most psychoanalytic writers have denied the extent to which envy and feelings of loss underlie the denigration or idealization of women. Male envy of women's fecundity and ability to produce food is certainly not unknown, but little is made of it. Similarly, the anxiety about the penis being cut off is rarely recognized as a metaphor for the annihilation that comes from being 'cut off from the source of goodness."

14. "By now the reader will have guessed what has really been happening behind all these facades. Man, with his need for self torture, his sublimated cruelty resulting from the cooping up of his animal nature within a polity, invented bad conscience in order to hurt himself, after the blocking of the more natural outlet of his cruelty."