{"title":"Strangers among us: psychoanalytic ethics at the crossroads.","authors":"Stan Case","doi":"10.1057/s11231-025-09513-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Psychoanalytic ethicists identify caring as the deepest virtue in our work, but what is our capacity for caring at the collective level? Beyond our \"groupish\" nature (Bion, 1961) and our collective unconscious (Jung, 1926), the author considers an emerging collective conscience, in our theories and practices. Freud (1930) believed that our post-oedipal superegos, through the sacrifice of individual instincts, builds civilization-the \"power of a community\" larger than each of us. By basing his theory on one intrapsychic actor in the tragic myth of Oedipus, Freud left out a whole cast of characters who Oedipus treated as outcasts. These strangers, and those he estranged, offered a community of care to the oedipal triad. In our time the Oedipal complex has transformed into oedipal complexity; individual Oedipus at the crossroads now encounters sociocultural intersectionality. Grounded by our phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenic beginnings to bond in groups through the ethic of caring, the author tracks the longer road we travel on towards the ethic of fairness.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-025-09513-w","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Psychology","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Psychoanalytic ethicists identify caring as the deepest virtue in our work, but what is our capacity for caring at the collective level? Beyond our "groupish" nature (Bion, 1961) and our collective unconscious (Jung, 1926), the author considers an emerging collective conscience, in our theories and practices. Freud (1930) believed that our post-oedipal superegos, through the sacrifice of individual instincts, builds civilization-the "power of a community" larger than each of us. By basing his theory on one intrapsychic actor in the tragic myth of Oedipus, Freud left out a whole cast of characters who Oedipus treated as outcasts. These strangers, and those he estranged, offered a community of care to the oedipal triad. In our time the Oedipal complex has transformed into oedipal complexity; individual Oedipus at the crossroads now encounters sociocultural intersectionality. Grounded by our phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenic beginnings to bond in groups through the ethic of caring, the author tracks the longer road we travel on towards the ethic of fairness.
期刊介绍:
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis is an international psychoanalytic quarterly founded in 1941 by Karen Horney. The journal''s purpose is to be an international forum for communicating a broad range of contemporary theoretical, clinical, professional and cultural concepts of psychoanalysis and for presenting related investigations in allied fields. It is a fully peer-reviewed journal, which welcomes psychoanalytic papers from all schools of thought that address the interests and concerns of scholars and practitioners of psychoanalysis and contribute meaningfully to the understanding of human experience. The journal publishes original papers, special issues devoted to a single topic, book reviews, film reviews, reports on the activities of the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Center, and comments.