BEFORE AFTER
The aim of the introduction of this concept is to establish a link between on the one hand political psychoanalysis, in particular such as is implemented in the theories of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse (current called "Freudo-Marxist") and on the other hand the ecologist, sociological and economic (critical of the growth) thoughts resulting from the Seventies and included in the contemporary movement called "alter-globalization".
It is an ecology because it puts a stress on continuity and the interdependence between the human being and the other living or not living systems. There is libido because universal life energy, corresponds to sexual energy (or libido) in mankind.
To discover more, go around our site!
It is the application of psychoanalysis to the analysis of society. Indeed the social relations and the model of society result from the psychism of the individuals who belong to this society. Those in return are shaped and "conditioned" by the dominating social model.
If individual therapy can hope to relieve some patients, only a global psychoanalytical approach of society can give the hope to correct the evils from which almost everybody suffers.
If you're interested, we recommend you the following book:
The political psychoanalysis, by Roger
Dadoun, P.U.F., Paris, 1995.
See also a selection of authors and links.
Reich (1897-1957) was a German psychoanalyst.
Disciple of Freud, he developed in the Thirties "the character
analysis" and clarified "the function of the orgasm". Very
quickly it could draw the political conclusions that the discoveries of psychoanalysis implied (see sexual
repression, exploitation and Fascism). He proposed an explanation for the
transformation of a community system to
the capitalist system ("the irruption of sexual morals") and tried to
diffuse its ideas (synthesized in "the sexual revolution") to the
masses ("the sexual fight of the young") particularly within
the Communist Party, from which he was excluded (just as he was
excluded from the international association of psychoanalysis) for his ideas appeared
so subversive.
Forced to the exile by the arrival of
the Nazis to power, he eventually settled in the United States. He explained the success of the Nazis and the failure of the German
Communist Party ("mass-psychology of Fascism", that he describes as an "emotional plague") as well as the
failure of the
Bolshevik revolution (addition to "the sexual revolution"). It delivered
a vigorous pamphlet on the contemporary
society ("Listen, little man!") and continued his work on universal life energy
(which he baptized "orgon"), trying to apply his discoveries to the cure of
cancer and the control of some weather phenomenon.
Arrested by the Food & Drug Administration because of his nonconformist activities, he died in prison in suspect circumstances
and his books were burned!
A film evokes the character and the work of Wilhelm Reich:
W.R. mysteries of the organism, by Dusan Makavejev, 1971.
To discover the work of Reich, we recommend the following book to you:
Hundred flowers for Wilhelm Reich, by Roger Dadoun, Payot, Paris, 1975.
Some of the major works of Wilhelm Reich:
Neurosis is a mental disease which results from traumas and from repression (of the emotions, the feelings, the expression, of sexuality) undergone in childhood which are driven back and internalized.
The symptoms are as much psychological as physical (various
phobias, stammering, hysteria, timidity, instability, depression,
chronic tiredness, chronic cold, belly-ache, muscular
rigidity...)
The neurosis is generally accompanied by difficulties of
communication and irrational behaviors creating conflicts in
particular within the families and within the professional framework,
and more generally in the operation of the
society and can therefore be considered as a social plague.
In our society, there is hardly any individual who is not affected by neurosis to some degree. This disease affects all social classes.
This term covers any mean of devaluing sexuality, whether it be brutal (for example the threat addressed to the little child
surprised while masturbating: "if you do it again I
will cut it from you!") or more subtle, veiling itself behind the terms
of "modesty" or "decency".
It is the same for any valorization of the sexual abstinence or of virginity.
It can be exerted by simply maintaining the mystery
around the sexual activities (topic either taboo or restrained to the adults,
stories of child born in cabbages or brought by storks, allusive
language...) as well as by denying the existence of infantile sexuality.
This repression can also take the form of a more general devaluing of the body, considered "dirty", "impure", "coarse", by opposition to a spirit, a "soul" considered to be of higher value. Sexuality is then lowered to "the satisfaction of instincts or coarse material needs".
It is one of the basic causes of neuroses, particularly when it strikes the young children.
"Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth, but it's usually too battered with rules to be heard. We cripple ourselves with lies. Most people have no idea of what they're missing, our society places a supreme value on control, on hiding what you feel. It mocks primitive culture and prides itself on the suppression of natural instincts and impulses." Jim Morrison.
"The anti-pleasure raising starts with childhood, works of parents and teachers, it is based on the reward-punishment system [... ] During childhood our various impulses sought to be carried out, our multiple emotions to be expressed. Each time they displeased the adults, they were repressed. Out of fear the child retained his desires, turn back his wishes, choked his joys, held in his angers, hid his sadnesses and his fears. He gave up acting openly, expressing himself, asking questions. In its body, thousands of blocked impulses, thousands of withheld gestures accumulated [... ] The frustrations, inhibitions and culpabilisations of childhood structure and make sore our body for the remainder of our lives." Doctor Leleu.
Many thinkers and in particular Far-Eastern philosophies
admit the existence of an energy present in any living body and which
circulates there. This energy is in particular the object of acupuncture.
Subjected to a magnetic field, any living body emits a radiation
which can be photographed. This phenomenon is known as the "Kirlian effect". This radiation changes intensity
depending on the physical and psychic state of the person.
According to some interpretations it could be a manifestation of life energy.
This vital energy can, according to Buddhists, be in various
states and circulate between various centers of energy (called
"Shakras") spread out between the brain and the genitals. It is also
along this longitudinal axis that Wilhelm Reich sees the circulation of the
sexual energy (named "libido" by Freud), which is dissipated, by an healthy
individual, by the orgasm.
This energy can also be exchanged between people or living beings. As an example, the potentialities of
healers (or "bonesetter")
able to help the healing of
wounds by laying their hands on it are widely documented.
These energy aspects of life have been completely ignored by Western science and the practices which refers to it, often included within shamanist or animist rituals, were fought against by obscurantist missionaries. This explains the poor development of knowledge in this field.
At present, in our society, one person out of three will
at least develop one cancer during his life!
This disease is called a "biopathy": a disordered state of the
vital process.
In addition to the absorption of carcinogenic products (in
exponential increase in our environment), this disease, closely
related to our way of life, can also have a psychic origin.
According to Reich, neurotic obstacles
(character armors) opposing the free circulation of life energy, can lead to
cancer, because of an abnormal accumulation of this energy. A famous
case is the one of the Swiss writer Fritz Zorn, deceased of a cancer of
the throat for lack of having the possibility to express himself within his family.
He exposed his case in its major work: "Mars".
It is an approach which considers its object as a whole. It is the opposite of an approach which would aim at studying
each element of the system piece by piece.
In medicine, it consists in considering the sick individual in
his entirety and not to be interested only in such or such organ
carrying a symptom.
By recognizing the interdependence (even the unity) between body
and spirit, the holistic approach makes it in particular possible to
take into account the psychic factors in the development and the
evolution of pathologies.
One will also speak about a "systemic" approach, i.e. which
studies the individual like a system in itself.
It is the aim of psychoanalysis to treat the neuroses by seeking its causes inside the unconscious of the patient. In particular it tries to recall to the conscience traumas or repression undergone in childhood and since then driven back.
Because of the interrelationships between the body and psychism, the neuroses can also be treated by approaches centered on the body and its armors (Reichian massage, anti-gymnastics...)
The approaches known as "psychotherapies" or behavioral therapies (gestalt, transactional analyzes...) focus more on allowing the patient to improve his behaviors and to better adapt himself to social life rather than on in depths treatment of neuroses.
At school, the teenagers benefit from courses of genital anatomy, directed towards the function of reproduction and from information on contraceptive methods . This could hardly be considered as sex education.
Sexuality constitutes one of the major elements of
human life. This can't be seriously dealt at school in a few hours, at the
margin. Sex education should be present throughout
the schooling as well as the other essential disciplines, and be
adapted to each age of the pupil. Do not forget that sexual
repression is also exerted by keeping silence around sexuality, which is a way
to denying the very existence of it, in particular when it concerns the young children.
An education to sexuality (and in a broader sense to
sensuality and pleasure) can be acquired apart from the school.
However, taking into account the disparities of the social, cultural and family
backgrounds from where the children come, the school must here also fully play its
civic role consisting in giving the possibility for all children to reach the same
level of knowledge and
capacities.
Sex education must consist not only in a
contribution to theoretical knowledge (anatomical but also on the functions of the body and psychism in connection with sexuality (the
"function of the orgasm") but also in an awakening to the
sensuality and in a discovery of the gestures of love-making.
For this is not innate: indeed many men and
women are awkward in their sexual and emotional intercourse throughout
their life, without sometimes even being able to learn from partners quite as awkward as them.
The effect of school education, such as it is practiced in our society, is to develop the child in an unbalanced way by excessively privileging the intellectual reasoning (the noblest topic being mathematics) while the activities aimed at awakening creativity and the senses (music, drawing, manual work) and physical education are the least valued courses.
In addition, the "one way" mode of teaching where the teacher delivers knowledge
to the child, who may only raise a question about what is begin taught or answer a
question asked by the teacher and has nothing to say about contents of the course, does not obviously
encourages the autonomy and the development of
the personality, nor does it raises the interest of the child for the course.
In addition the selective and competitive system, while it may
create emulation, also results in excluding the
children who are less adapted to the methods and contents
of the lessons. For these children humiliation and frustration are part of the daily
bread.
While other methods of schooling (e.g. Summerhill)
or teaching (Freinet method, Montessori... see a selection of links)
giving to the child more autonomy and possibilities to express his creativity
exists, they remain marginal and are not integrated into the public education.
The first objective of the public school is to train citizens in full possession of their means. Yet we witness worrying drifts which are on the one hand the introduction of racist and religious cleavages which threatens secularity and on the other hand an attempt made by the merchants to take over the schools through the introduction of advertisement and by the introduction of early specialization aimed at supplying the companies with an undereducated work-force.
In fact, in our society the body is widely present: advertising misuses stripped bodies (they are seldom completely naked however or only in a de-sexualized presentation), pornography is widely spread and made common, women magazines (and now men) abound in recipes for "health-beauty-fitness" transforming the body into an object of obsessed care.
One easily perceives the common points to all these types of representations of the body. First of all the body is generally considered only in its appearance. The body is always used for a commercial aim (to input libido into consumer goods, to sell products, care, surgical operations perfectly superfluous). It is an objectified body, which has to be made "perfect" including with the use of mutilations (surgery, prostheses...). Far from being valued, the body is not accepted the way it is since it must be transformed (in perfect consumerist logic). Eventually sexuality is reduced by pornography to a mechanical act "disencumbered" of any desire.
The body, accepted such as it is, naked without fancy artifices, not in an esthetic nor medical presentation, invested by sex and desire, remains a subversive element.
"Thirty years of wearing bikinis did not erase two millenia of Judeo-Christian culture. And this overflow of flesh isn't more a sign of liberation than is the accession to credit. It is, on the contrary, the parapraxis by which we hopelessly try to renew contact with this body that we flee." Marie-Lise Labonté , psychotherapist.
The fights of the Seventies certainly did bring substantial advances (the
"sexual liberation", steps towards the recognition of the equality of rights
for women and sexual minorities,
contraception, abortion...) nevertheless there is still a long way to go.
The evidence is in the survival (meaning that there is still a need)
of prostitution and pornography. Thus revealing a sexual
frustration still widely spread as well as a consumerist drift of
sexuality. One will also note the persistence of machism, vulgarity
and homophobia which testify that
patriarchal obscurantism is still deeply rooted. Notwithstanding sexual abuses.
Also revealing is the amalgam which is being made between pedophilia and rape, and the atmosphere of near hysteria which prevails today around
this issue (recent examples: the prohibition of the movie "the
Drum" in some states of the United States or the denial
of a famous French leader of the May 1968 movement who had
evoked sexual requests made by children towards him, as an adult). There remains
unquestionably in our society a true taboo over the sexuality of children.
Lastly the few advances which were referred to are far
from being conquered in many countries of the world.
Below: let's compare, from our point of view, Michelangelo's
painting of the roof of the Sixtine chapel (1512) and this French poster for a Hollywood
movie of 2003. Edifying,
isn't it ?
BEFORE
AFTER
Capitalism is a mode of production (and thus of organizing the society) in which the means of
production are
within the hands of a minority (the "capitalists") while the majority of the
work-force (the "proletarians") are employed and remunerated by this
minority. The capitalists make profit out of the activity of the
proletarians by under-remunerating them.
This mechanism allows an accumulation of wealth on the detriments of the workers. However the workers are invited
to always consume more goods and services so that the activity of
production can continue to increase ("growth"). This consumption
can be maintained thanks to credit, a judicious mechanism which
makes it possible to collect the future incomes of the indebted consumer.
Capitalism, a system based on the exploitation of man by man, can be maintained only thanks to the consent of precisely those which are its victims. That's what one names, after Etienne de La Boétie, "voluntary servitude". Obtaining this consent, passivity or resignation, is the task devoted to the various kinds of "opium of the people". This task is all the more easy as the individuals are less fit for autonomy. Yet one of the basic effects of sexual repression is precisely to produce individuals poorly able to freedom, needing to be taken care of, easily manipulated.
Fascism is a demagogic ideology, including mystical ideas (e.g. racism) which gains the adhesion of neurotic masses. It collects the power of a libido diverted from its object (sexuality) by the obstacles internalized by the individual. Its violent and irrational aspects correspond to the impulses imprisoned within the character armor of the neurotic individual. In addition the repressed individual has a tendency turn towards a leader (a "Führer") incarnation of the paternal authority, whom it will follow blindly.
Fortunately all the neurotic individuals are not carried towards Fascism. As for the symptoms, the tendencies developed by the neurotic individuals are quite varied.
However, sexual repression being the main source of energy which feeds the fascistic impulses, and this repression being the condition of the maintenance of the voluntary yielding necessary to capitalism, it is illusory to believe that one can erase Fascism within the capitalist society. Fascism is in fact a by-product of capitalism.
"Religion is the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity." Sigmund Freud.
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Mysticism is one of the ways which libido can take when it is diverted from sexuality. It is not by chance that the mystics precisely assert sexual abstinence. It is not by chance that one speaks about "mystical ecstasy" (see illustration opposite). It has even sometimes been observed that emissions of sperm accompany "mystical crises". In addition sexual repression has always been the goodwill of monotheist religions . The churches stand as guardians of the (anti-sexual) morals. One of the tools used for this action being, for the Catholics, the confession, less used to collect secrets than to make the believers feel guilty: « my child, haven't you devoted yourself to "impure contacts"? ». Through constantly imposing the feeling of guilt of the "sinners" the churches equipped themselves with a remarkable tool for control and suppression of the individuals, thus maintaining the "voluntary yielding". |
 The Saint-Teresa ecstasy, sculpture of Bernini |
 The temptation of Saint-Anthony, by Félicien Rops. |
It is thus not by chance that sexuality is the major
obsession of the fundamentalist preachers, whether they are Jewish, Christian
or Moslem. Nothing is more unbearable for them than what
extends sexuality beyond the simple function of reproduction (e.g.
contraception, bi or homosexuality...). It is not by chance that the reactionaries ideologists have sanctified the family (naturally patriarchal and heterosexual), basic stone of the capitalist society, best fitted place for the reproduction of the neurosis.
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Libido ecology intends to be a theoretical framework about an in-depth (radical) change of the society. A change aimed at the liberation and the blooming of all the individuals in a preserved environment, as well as at the limitation of irrational behaviours generating hatred and violence.
Today only the alter-globalization movement (with his wide diversity, sometimes carrying contradictory interests and visions) is carrying such a project of renewal of the society. It is thus in its bosom that our association must bring its views, the more so as few efforts are being done to analyze the major roots of the contemporary social structure.
| There are numerous associations which fight locally, day after day, to defend the rights and the dignity of
those who are left aside by our society; associations which fight for equality between the
people or peace around the world; trade unions which defend the
rights of the workers and the social rights. Indeed most of the mobilized forces are trying hard to stop the advance of the new-liberal crushing roller and to limit its disastrous effects. This unequal combat is only meaningfull if it is understood as a delaying action intended to prepare a decisive counter-attack. Pursuing this goal, alike Delilah cutting the hair of the invincible Samson (illustration opposite), the libido ecology proposes to dry up the source the energy which feeds this suicidal system: sexual repression. |
 Samson and Delilah, by Peter Paul Rubens |
See also the communication published on the occasion of the European Social Forum 2003.
Ecology is the study of the natural systems apprehended in
their total operation and in their interactions. This discipline can be
considered holistic.
The study of the energy interactions between living organisms
(or non-living mediums) is part of the ecology. Moreover our
approach stresses the interdependence between the human being and its
natural environment and tends to restore a form of continuity between
the two.
The practice of the shaman is centered on the emotions coming from the senses. It consists in collecting energies which circulate in the universe between the living beings.
"Emotion is the supra-intelligence, located not above the brain but above the body" says Luis Ansa.
The indigenous societies which were not influenced by the missionaries (either monotheists or Stalinists!) have an animist spirituality based on shamanism. These societies have a close relationship with their natural environment which they use in a nondestructive way. The knowledge and the practices of these people should be a source of inspiration for our ecologists researches as well as for our search of "other possible worlds", as alternates to the prospects of the liberal "single thought".
The progressive degradation of their condition with respect to their proximity to "civilization" is very clear. It starts with the wearing of panties... (the first accessory with which the missionaries equip them!) and generally ends up in a great forfeiture (alcoholism, family violence, prostitution...). The seizing evolution which strikes these societies at the contact of our model of civilization should help us to become aware of our own degree of alienation.
Here is the comment Tawapuh (Indian from Xingu, a relatively preserved area of Amazonia) made on his return from a visit to a Brazilian metropolis, addressed to the anthropologist Villas Boas: "How could you return to this world after seeing how we live? [... ] Why would you want to have intercourse with these women who seem afraid to be woman and hide themselves and cover their eyes?"
The concept of life energy, circulating in the body and meeting various states is familiar to many Eastern approaches, in particular the Buddhist philosophy and Tantrism. It is also the base of the therapeutic practice of acupuncture.
High relief of the temple of Lakshmana, in
India.
