Norman O. Huh?

This is Jamie Ferri.

              While not one of the easiest reads, Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History was very intriguing and thought provoking. 

            “Human history is the history of neurosis”.  Humans are driven by our repressed desires, which both Brown and Freud would agree.

            According to Luther, “the world is the Devil, and the Devil is the world.  Everything is full of devils…” This is rather disturbing.  It almost gives a glass half empty outlook on the world.  While there is always the unspoken balance of God and the Devil, society and religion tend to focus on doing right or good for God and leaving the consequences for Hell and the Devil.  In this sense I guess it makes sense to say the Devil controls people because human behavior is centralized around the consequences of doing wrong.  Perhaps an obsession with one or the other could be this neurosis that seems to drive the world crazy.

Here’s something I was also confused by:  “Reason is the Devil’s bride and whore”(213).  Reason is necessary and good, yet evil and therefore a teaching of the Devil.  “Conscience is a beast and a bad devil” (213).   Luther completely devalues human free-will, saying that it either belongs to God or the Devil and that man is not a third power. 

Life under the domination of the death instinct:  Does this mean that people are living to die?  Or does it mean that people live everyday doing everything they cannot to die?  I could not be more confused.  Right when I think I understand a point he is trying to make, I go ahead and lose it because I’m thrown off by something else.  Feel free to explain.