Being Human

The question as to what defines a human being is at the heart of Freud’s writings - and it is a question answered in numerous ways. Let me just highlight one that seems particularly relevant and telling for the crises we are facing and witnessing in our era of ecological catastrophes and disastrous violent conflicts. Shortly after the First World War, Freud was preoccupied with two problems that at first sight seem unrelated: What has psychoanalysis to say about the phenomenon of shell shock? And what is the psychology of a group? In Beyond the Pleasure Principle the first question leads Freud to compare the psychic collapse found in shell-shocked patients reliving horrible situations in the trenches with the most elementary unicellular living substance, an undifferentiated vesicle (cell) that finds itself “easily dying” in a hostile environment. In the course of time it acquires the ability to protect itself by turning its surface into an inorganic shell. It partially dies in order to survive. The answer to the second question is “binding”: a group is a network of libidinal ties. And this also finds its way into Beyond the Pleasure Principle. A body - a human body - results from cells and organs binding themselves together, working together, with the aim of prolonging life. For me, the radical and moving idea expressed here by Freud is the daring analogy between human beings and single cells. So vulnerable and yet so resilient.

Herman Westerink is Endowed Professor and Associate Professor for philosophy of religion at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He did his PhD at the University of Groningen and wrote his professorial dissertation (Habilitation) at the University of Vienna. He has published many books and articles on Freudian psychoanalysis, sexuality, subjectivity and religion. Amongst others he published a monograph on Freud’s theories of the sense of guilt (2009), a monograph on and text editions of the first edition of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (2016, 2021, with Philippe Van Haute). Also, he published a monograph on Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (2019). Recently he published a monograph on Freud’s metaphysics of trauma (2022, with Philippe Van Haute). He is co-editor of the book series “Sigmund Freuds Werke: Wiener Interdisziplinäre Kommentare” (Vienna UP) and of the book series “Figures of the Unconscious” (Leuven University Press). He is member of the International Society for Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (ISPP/SIPP) and its Freud Research Group.