Against Reality - By Leon S. Brenner
One of the most common misuses of Freud’s notion of the “reality principle” is confusing it with the adaptation of the patient to reality. In doing so, many psychoanalysts and therapists take it upon themselves to be the harbingers of “realism.” One particularly prominent claim is that we should “wake up and smell the coffee,” breaking out of our fantasies to meet objective reality as it is. However, Freud never formulated such a naïve conception of the reality principle as representing a single objective reality that shapes our thoughts.
Contrary to these claims, Freud postulated that the reality principle solely enables the subject to delay immediate satisfaction in the aim of future satisfaction. In this pamphlet, Leon Brenner develops a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Following Freud and Lacan, he claims that the subject must come to terms with its impossible relationship with the object in objective reality. Instead, Brenner offers a conception of psychic reality and the idea that its major coordinates are not shaped by real objective facts but by fantasy formations that are in constant movement. According to this conception, instead of seeking to extract the Real from objective reality, to continue living, the subject must go against reality in as much as it is conceived of as a Real in relation to which one can only be an object.
Everyday Analysis produces a series of pamphlets dealing with contemporay social and political issues. The project is interested in Marxist and Psychoanalytic approaches to politics, culture and economics which take a universalist perspective an refuse to align with prevailing identiarian discourses. General Editions now publishes the New Zealand editions, but visit everydayanalysis.co.uk for more information.
36pp
55g, 11.3x16.6x0.4cm
This New Zealand edition published General Editions in association with everyday anyalysis 2024
One of the most common misuses of Freud’s notion of the “reality principle” is confusing it with the adaptation of the patient to reality. In doing so, many psychoanalysts and therapists take it upon themselves to be the harbingers of “realism.” One particularly prominent claim is that we should “wake up and smell the coffee,” breaking out of our fantasies to meet objective reality as it is. However, Freud never formulated such a naïve conception of the reality principle as representing a single objective reality that shapes our thoughts.
Contrary to these claims, Freud postulated that the reality principle solely enables the subject to delay immediate satisfaction in the aim of future satisfaction. In this pamphlet, Leon Brenner develops a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Following Freud and Lacan, he claims that the subject must come to terms with its impossible relationship with the object in objective reality. Instead, Brenner offers a conception of psychic reality and the idea that its major coordinates are not shaped by real objective facts but by fantasy formations that are in constant movement. According to this conception, instead of seeking to extract the Real from objective reality, to continue living, the subject must go against reality in as much as it is conceived of as a Real in relation to which one can only be an object.
Everyday Analysis produces a series of pamphlets dealing with contemporay social and political issues. The project is interested in Marxist and Psychoanalytic approaches to politics, culture and economics which take a universalist perspective an refuse to align with prevailing identiarian discourses. General Editions now publishes the New Zealand editions, but visit everydayanalysis.co.uk for more information.
36pp
55g, 11.3x16.6x0.4cm
This New Zealand edition published General Editions in association with everyday anyalysis 2024
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-0670563-3-9
NB. Use ‘Domestic Letter Post’ or ‘NZ POST Courier A5 ECO’.
For international orders visit everydayanalysis.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-0670563-3-9
NB. Use ‘Domestic Letter Post’ or ‘NZ POST Courier A5 ECO’.
For international orders visit everydayanalysis.co.uk
