it’s high time that we free ourselves from Freud’s restrictive definition of what is a Weltanschaaung, and accept the fact that the practice of psychoanalysis entails more than a questioning attitude to the riddles of life carried out by means of a rigorous scientific method.
Is it really a sign of dogmatism or narrow mindness to form a political and ethical judgement based on the psychoanalytic idea, for instance, that as humans we are torn between life and death drives and this conflict accounts for the ambivalence we feel towards the good object? Are we stepping out of our jurisdiction if we maintain that this ambivalence is reflected by our political system and social institutions, as well as by the technologies we develop?
paper read at the Ara Pacis conference, Rome November 2016>>