Karl Figlio's guest appearances

Karl Figlio

Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies

Sarah Pessin

Alexander Etkind

Helen Epstein

Lawrence L. Langer

Simon J. Ortiz

Rainer U. W. Schulze

Sandor Goodhart

Gabriele M. Schwab

Leslie Marmon Silko

Yael Danieli

Patricia Huntington

Gabrielle Schwab

Marianne Hirsh

Leo Spitzer

Berel Lang

OwlTail

Collective memory is the backbone of collective identity. But Collective memory is also constantly at risk, troubled by its less welcome aspects; and so, therefore, is collective identity. More fundamentally, there seems to be an elemental unease at the root – what Freud called an ‘Unbehagen in der Kultur’. Thus a nation fights to defend its collective memory and identity, as it fights to defend its territory or political structure. Karl Figlio is both a professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, United Kingdom and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. With a previous background in biological sciences and the history and philosophy of science and medicine, he aims to bridge the gap between clinical psychoanalytic and social and epistemological enquiry, with an emphasis on masculinity. In his 2001 publication, Psychoanalysis, Science, and Masculinity, Figlio explores both the limitations and applications of science when looking for meaning about the psyche. “The language of psychoanalysis,” Figlio writes, “can sound as strange and far from ordinary experience as the language of natural science in comparison to everyday empirical reality.” Thus, Figlio works to incorporate the internal reflections of psychoanalysis with the external experimentation of science, bringing them into a conversation where both have a place in exploring the nature of the human psyche. He is currently working on collective memory and nationalism, against the background of Freud’s concept of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’ and addresses issues related to this work in his lectures.In some cases, the disturbance to collective memory and identity is extreme, and it does not seem possible to reconstruct an acceptable, coherent, continuous account. It is as if there is a smudge so deep as to suggest an inherent flaw in collective character, something like an Unbehagen. Situations involving likeness, as in ethnic conflict and anti-Semitism, bring it out, as Freud noted in his concept of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’. In considering such a situation, I would shift the focus away from memory to the process of remembering; away from the fact of ‘true’ or ‘false’ memories, to the way that the collective grapples with its past. In this paper, I will explore the process of reconstructing a liveable account of German identity, which spans the Nazi period, and specifically Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Historians, sociologists, philosophers, theologians and novelists have contributed to understanding this horrific – what shall we call it: episode, perversion, deviation, spirit – in German history. I will look at one aspect, from a psychoanalytic angle. I will argue that remembering is a form of what the psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, called ‘reparation’, and that there is a traduced form of remembering-as-reparation, which psychoanalysts in the Kleinian tradition call ‘manic reparation’. They look the same, but reparation is based on guilt and concern for damage to the other, while manic reparation is based on narcissistic aggrandizement and contempt for the other. I think that these concepts allow a translation of understanding from clinical psychoanalysis into cultural analysis and that they throw light on the extreme difficulty of building a trusting environment for collective remembering, especially in the aftermath of atrocity. In both the clinical and the cultural situation, good intention can arouse suspicion of duplicity, which undermines the collaborative effort to secure a base of pride. A memorial to victims of war becomes a memorial for the SS. The concepts of reparation and manic reparation suggest a way to differentiate and characterize polarized accounts of post-war German remembering as properly making-better or as infiltrated by apologetics.

Collective memory is the backbone of collective identity. But Collective memory is also constantly at risk, troubled by its less welcome aspects; and so, therefore, is collective identity. More fundamentally, there seems to be an elemental unease at the root – what Freud called an ‘Unbehagen in der Kultur’. Thus a nation fights to defend its collective memory and identity, as it fights to defend its territory or political structure. Karl Figlio is both a professor in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, United Kingdom and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. With a previous background in biological sciences and the history and philosophy of science and medicine, he aims to bridge the gap between clinical psychoanalytic and social and epistemological enquiry, with an emphasis on masculinity. In his 2001 publication, Psychoanalysis, Science, and Masculinity, Figlio explores both the limitations and applications of science when looking for meaning about the psyche. “The language of psychoanalysis,” Figlio writes, “can sound as strange and far from ordinary experience as the language of natural science in comparison to everyday empirical reality.” Thus, Figlio works to incorporate the internal reflections of psychoanalysis with the external experimentation of science, bringing them into a conversation where both have a place in exploring the nature of the human psyche. He is currently working on collective memory and nationalism, against the background of Freud’s concept of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’ and addresses issues related to this work in his lectures. In some cases, the disturbance to collective memory and identity is extreme, and it does not seem possible to reconstruct an acceptable, coherent, continuous account. It is as if there is a smudge so deep as to suggest an inherent flaw in collective character, something like an Unbehagen. Situations involving likeness, as in ethnic conflict and anti-Semitism, bring it out, as Freud noted in his concept of the ‘narcissism of minor differences’. In considering such a situation, I would shift the focus away from memory to the process of remembering; away from the fact of ‘true’ or ‘false’ memories, to the way that the collective grapples with its past. In this paper, I will explore the process of reconstructing a liveable account of German identity, which spans the Nazi period, and specifically Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Historians, sociologists, philosophers, theologians and novelists have contributed to understanding this horrific – what shall we call it: episode, perversion, deviation, spirit – in German history. I will look at one aspect, from a psychoanalytic angle. I will argue that remembering is a form of what the psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, called ‘reparation’, and that there is a traduced form of remembering-as-reparation, which psychoanalysts in the Kleinian tradition call ‘manic reparation’. They look the same, but reparation is based on guilt and concern for damage to the other, while manic reparation is based on narcissistic aggrandizement and contempt for the other. I think that these concepts allow a translation of understanding from clinical psychoanalysis into cultural analysis and that they throw light on the extreme difficulty of building a trusting environment for collective remembering, especially in the aftermath of atrocity. In both the clinical and the cultural situation, good intention can arouse suspicion of duplicity, which undermines the collaborative effort to secure a base of pride. A memorial to victims of war becomes a memorial for the SS. The concepts of reparation and manic reparation suggest a way to differentiate and characterize polarized accounts of post-war German remembering as properly making-better or as infiltrated by apologetics.

Karl Figlio, Collective Memory, Remembering and Manic Reparation