Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History [Paperback]

Norman O. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1959

A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the most interesting and valuable works of our time. Brown's contribution to moral thought . . . cannot be overestimated. His book is far-ranging, thoroughgoing, extreme, and shocking. It gives the best interpretation of Freud I know." (Lionel Trilling ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

5 1/2 x 8 1/2 trim. LC 85-17928 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (October 15, 1959)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819560103
• ISBN-13: 978-0819560100
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,787,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, August 19, 2005

By 

R. Schwartz (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Paperback)

An awesome book on the psychoanalytical meaning of history. I read that this book was admired by Jim Morrison in his bio by fellow band member Ray Manzarek. Books to read come in strange ways. I also read about this book referenced by the integral psychologist and philosopher Ken Wilber.

This books gives credibility to Freudian Analysis. Nor that it was ever lost, but there are neo-Freudians which of course differ from Freud and there is the reductionism when one looks only through one paradigm, regardless of it's accuracy. This is because there are other modes or of insight that co-inside and yet contradict some of Freud, but that's the beauty of it all, of the psychoanalytical analysis paradigm. And this paradigm is one of the subjective mind, unless you consider Freud to also be biological, then it would take in objectivity, but only in certain levels and degrees. And so this book I think expounds profoundly and is a deep book.

OK, this book speaks of Freud's "pleasure principle," "reality principle," Oedipus complex," "death instinct," castration anxiety," and while this outwardly may sound very limited, the issue comes down to one thing, repression. And whether its sexual, excremental, power or various levels of blocked emotional energies, the theories employed as to why and are very valuable in understanding ourselves and others. And this repression is based on sublimated infantile erotic pleasures beyond into a reality principle and in many cases death instinct. There are many fascinating chapters/essays on these ideas. The fact of the matter is we all came from the womb, all had consciousness of embryonic narcissistic selfhood and sought pleasure and had to deal with reality. We all had a mother (not including abandonment) who became our entire world, our need for pleasure verses pain and desire to possess and it was of a erotic nature. And we all had to deal with separation aspects as major threats to our consciousness.. So much of psychoanalysis rings of truth.

Interesting how the death instinct is the desire to get back to the womb, the incapacity to accept the individuality of life. So it's this form of romanticism, to get back to the child, to play. Unfortunately it negates life in that it fails to accept and represses and causes a life view, either socially, politically, individually & etc. to live a live of undue restraint or hardships with the idea that this life is all temporary, working towards dying in this life to be rewarded with the return back to the womb. And so this is a death against life, a life where the irrational Dionysian play is destroyed and we live in a purely empirical scientific age of logic and rationalistic work, where living is logic in work, as opposed to the idea of play, of childlike ability to live in the present moment, without historicity and guilt and instead the moment where all action is spontaneous play. But instead we repress our play, create history from guilt and rationalize a materialist way of living. The archaic man sublimated his guilt in group activity and had this marvelous trait of each year erasing his historicity in sharing, but even then it was a form of sublimation of guilt. Modern man just builds on his history and lives a capitalistic life based on valueless commodity. Value is measurement, quantity, no longer quality and art. Money has become our excrement. The archaic man transferred or sublimated his sexual and infantile narcissistic energies into a community or shared social system. The modern man sublimates his into money and things he puts value into.

History seen through the eyes of psychoanalysis can be viewed as the sublimation of repression. In this, the infant first exists according the pleasure principle in where is bodily functions take first priority. The reality principle of course combats this and the young child develops the Oedipus complex, wishing to completely own his mother, jealous, wishing to eliminate his father or become the father to himself.

In sublimation, there is the repression of bodily and sexual instinctive desires into what we know of as culture. And the higher the culture the greater the sublimation. What has culminated is our era of objective materialism and empirical science which represses the non-rational nature of wish fulfillment's, desires and instinctual drives. Brown proposes that we reestablish our Dionysian roots, the creative, non repressive self where the use of a money and culture are not the means of escaping the pleasure principle. Instead we play, erase historicity, loose the guilt and accept our entire bodies, not just our minds.

The essay on Jonathan Swift, his exposure of what appears to be prideful human intellectuals and cultural values to come from the anus and excrement (the as***le and sh*t). And he both Norman O. Brown and Jonathan Swift link as all ideas as coming from the human body, ideas used to empower persons, elevate and leave teachings that far outlive the human being's body, another wards a way to be immortal, as an act of repression of the anxiety of death, of separateness. The idea of becoming one's own father - immortality, the Oedipus complex. There is much to this. And yet in a sense, all "matter" comes from excrement, which is what all we are made from biologically, the very biological make up that brings forth our minds and intellectual ideas.

Much, much more to this book, not said here.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lucid and strange, October 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Paperback)

Norman O. Brown's interpretation of Freud is clearly written, startling in its conclusions, and important for anyone trying to understand Freud's theory of sublimation. However, he comes to the opposite view of Freud, insofar as Brown values art as a Dionysian and liberating force, rather than as a mere symptomology of the artist's psychic disturbance. The analysis of the death-instinct and its relation to culture is particularly brilliant. However, I found the latter part of the book, with its Swiftian emphasis, to be less than persuasive.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read, January 3, 2002

By 

Bill Carter (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Paperback)

This is not really a review - time is lacking. Just a strong recommendation. If the question "What is the human animal?" is on your mind, read this book! In my opinion, Life Against Death ranks among the most important modern contributions toward an understanding of the human condition. It is on the same short list as Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus. Like these works and indeed the subject, it is not an easy read. I am ordering a fresh copy and looking forward to the introduction by Christopher Lasch which I have not read. I also recommend Norman O. Brown's other works - in particular, Love's Body and the collection of essays, Apocalypse And/or Metamorphosis. I first read Brown in the 1960s and revisit him often. There are those who dismiss Brown as a 1960s enfant terrible (Life was in fact written in the 1950s) but listen to them not!