Carlo Strenger

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Carlo Strenger (born July 16, 1958 in Basel ; died October 25, 2019 in Tel-Aviv ) was a Swiss - Israeli professor of psychology and philosophy , practicing existential psychoanalyst and publicist .

Carlo Strenger (Photo: Rami Zarnegar, February 2016)

Life

Carlo Strenger grew up in Basel in an Orthodox Jewish family. After converting from Orthodox Judaism to atheism , which he described in retrospect as the groundbreaking experience of his life, Strenger lived in Israel for a year. He began studying psychology and philosophy in Zurich and obtained his doctorate ( Ph.D. ) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1989 . He then began teaching at Tel Aviv University , where he later held a professorship. Carlo Strenger was also active on the academic advisory board of the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Terror Research at the City University of New York and member of the Daseinanalytisches Seminar in Zurich. As a publicist, Strenger wrote about Israeli and European politics, the Middle East conflict and cultural issues, especially for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . Strenger lived in Tel Aviv with his wife Julia Elad-Strenger, a political psychologist.

Psychoanalysis

Strenger's first research area was psychoanalysis . His perspective was characterized by the interdisciplinary integration of flexible psychoanalytic practice and results from sociology , economics and neurosciences . In his book Individuality, the Impossible Project , he developed a new theoretical and clinical approach that shows that the rapid cultural, social and economic transformations of the last few decades have led to new psychodynamic constellations that differ greatly from previous psychoanalytic models. Strenger has been described by critics as one of the most creative psychoanalytic theorists today.

globalization

Since 2000 Strenger has been researching the influence of globalization on the individual psyche, culture and politics. In The Designed Self he showed that those generations who grow up in a globalized reality are influenced far more by contemporary media than by historical traditions and often suffer from disorientation. He expanded this model in the publication The Fear of Insignificance , which has been translated into numerous languages. Strenger shows that mankind has created a new mutation - he calls it Homo Globalis - which is defined by the intensive relationship with the infotainment network. He critically illuminates the myths of global capitalism, especially the idea that everything is feasible, which for him is symbolized in the most successful advertising slogan of all time “Just do it!”. With the help of clinical, sociological and economic data, he shows that the global frame of reference makes it significantly more difficult for the homo globalis to develop a stable sense of self-worth, and consequently they suffer from an increased fear of insignificance. In Freud's Legacy in the Global Era , he shows the clinical relevance of this model in detailed case studies.

Israeli Politics and the Middle East Conflict

Carlo Strenger worked as a political publicist since 1997. Since 2007 he has written columns for Israel's leading left-liberal newspaper Haaretz , since 2012 for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and occasionally for The Guardian . He was of time called "one of the wisest voices of the Israeli left" -Journalist Jörg Lau as. Strenger was a sharp critic of Israeli settlement policy, which he saw as a great moral and political danger to Israel's future.

But he also consistently criticized the unilateral condemnation of Israel, particularly by the European left. He repeatedly pointed out that these condemnations denied the complexity of the Middle East conflict. For a long time he was an advocate of the two-state solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but since 2011 Strictly has been pessimistic that this solution could still be feasible in view of the slide in Israeli politics to the right and the weakness of the Palestinian leadership.

Stricter's book Israel: Introduction to a Difficult Land was discussed in Die Zeit as "one of the most important books to have appeared about Israel in recent years." Stricter shows that Israel is involved in a cultural war for the identity of the country in which the left-liberal secular forces that dominate Israel's economy and high culture are today in a minority. In addition, he shows how ultra-orthodox, right-wing national and national-religious forces in an anti-liberal coalition are profoundly changing the character of Israel.

Political philosophy

Already in Fear of Insignificance Strenger pointed out that Western culture has been severely weakened by relativistic tendencies that make the defense of Western values ​​impossible. Strenger pleaded for a return to the values ​​of the European Enlightenment. In his essay Civilized Contempt - A Guide to Defending Our Freedom , Strenger argues that the ideology of political correctness , although born out of good intentions, is an “own goal for the West”. It has led to any criticism of non-Western cultures being illegitimate, whereas self-mortification by the West has become the norm, especially on the political left. The result, according to Strenger, is that unsettled citizens turn to the extreme right again and again in order to get a feeling of security.

While many leftists and liberals are paralyzed by the logic of political correctness, people like Marine Le Pen and movements like Pegida are rising to defenders of the West - and undermining the very values ​​of freedom that they claim to protect. In this situation, Strenger argues that the moderate political forces must be able to defend the liberal order again. Strenger developed an attitude of civilized contempt as an alternative to political correctness , with which the enlightenment principle of tolerance is turned upside down again: Instead of respecting every form of belief and life and handling it discursively with kid gloves, one would have to remember that nothing and Nobody should be immune to well-founded criticism: "If other cultures are not allowed to be criticized, you cannot defend your own." This attitude of contempt is more strictly linked to two principles, only then can it be called "civilized":

  • The “principle of humanity”: One may despise opinions, beliefs, behavior and values, but not the people who represent them themselves. Their dignity and respect for them must always be preserved. "Civilized contempt is the ability to despise without hating or dehumanizing."
  • The “principle of responsible opinion-forming”: You have to make a serious effort to reflect on the state of knowledge in the relevant disciplines and to put forward appropriate arguments.

Strictly, responsible opinion -forming is endangered by cognitive distortions - for example, by the tendency to prematurely accept factual assertions that fit one's own emotional or ideological preferences and to avoid easily findable contradicting information. Such irresponsible opinion-forming is precisely what should be despised. Strenger suggests the "doctor's test" to test whether an opinion is being formed responsibly. Imagine a family member is seriously ill and ask yourself whether you would accept the doctor's therapeutic opinion if, for example, it ignores the relevant clinical studies and is founded on faith. "I strongly assume that in such a case even the American right, denying the knowledge about climate change , although 97 percent of all experts agree, would report such a doctor for negligence and disregard of his professional duties."

Crisis of the cosmopolitan elite

Strict's essay in book form Those bloody liberal elites. Who you are and why we need you covers 172 pages. It is half an attempt at a cultural-sociological analysis and half a self-questioning. In five case studies, he examines individual personalities who belong to this top group like himself, for their social and ethical strengths and weaknesses. The focus is on the question of how the communication between these highly mobile layers and the local national majorities could so clearly collapse. For the international right-wing populists, the globalist elites have therefore become the central enemy. And he does not make a distinction between business elites and cultural elites, the reviewer of Deutschlandfunk Kultur notes critically.

Publications

Monographs

  • Those bloody liberal elites. Who they are and why we need them. Suhrkamp-Verlag, Edition Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3518074985 .
  • Adventure freedom - a guide to uncertain times. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-07144-1 .
  • Freud's Legacy in the Global Era. Routledge, London 2015, ISBN 978-1138840294 .
  • Civilized Disdain - A Guide to Defending Our Freedom. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-518-07441-1 .
  • Israel - Introduction to a Difficult Country. Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-633-54255-0 .
  • The Fear of Insignificance: Searching for Meaning in the Twenty-first Century. Palgrave-Mcmillan, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1138840294 .
  • The Designed Self. Routledge, London 2004, ISBN 978-0881634198 .
  • The Quest for Voice in Contemporary Psychoanalysis. International Universities Press, Madison, CT 2002, ISBN 978-0823657629 .
  • Individuality, the Impossible Project. International Universities Press, Madison, CT 1998, ISBN 978-0823626250 .
  • Between Hermeneutics and Science: An Essay on the Epistemology of Psychoanalysis. International Universities Press, Madison, CT 1991, ISBN 978-0823604975 .

Selected papers

Compare the list of publications on the official author's website.

Web links

Commons : Carlo Strenger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carlo Strenger died today at the age of 61 in Tel Aviv. In: Suhrkamp-Verlag's Twitter account. October 25, 2019, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  2. ^ Carlo Strenger: From Yeshiva to Critical Pluralism. In: Psychoanalytic Inquiry. 2002/22, pp. 534–558 , accessed on October 26, 2019 (English, summary).
  3. ^ Column "Orient". In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Archived from the original on April 15, 2017 ; accessed on October 26, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Dr. Julia Elad-Strenger. IDC Herzliya Research College Tel Aviv, archived from the original on September 18, 2018 ; accessed on October 26, 2019 (English).
  5. ↑ Roland Kaufhold: The left voice of reason. In: haGalil . October 26, 2019, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  6. ^ Stuart Twemlow: Review of Individuality, the Impossible Project. In: Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association , 2002/50, pp. 1072-1077.
  7. ↑ Carlo Strenger: “Just Do it!” - Global Myth and Psychic Reality. (Video on YouTube , 14:25 minutes) Sigmund Freud Museum, 2010, accessed on October 26, 2019 .
  8. ^ Carlo Strenger: A two-way process. In: The Guardian . January 29, 2009. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Alexandra Senfft: About the pain of others. (pdf, 317 kB) In: Die Zeit 50/2011. December 7, 2011, accessed October 26, 2019 (review).
  10. ^ Carlo Strenger: France's right-wing slide: How the left with its political correctness does Europe a disservice. In: NZZ Online . March 31, 2015, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  11. ^ Richard C. Schneider : Politically correct maneuvered to the side. (Video, 27:21 minutes) In: ARD blog “Between the Mediterranean and Jordan”. March 23, 2015, archived from the original on March 24, 2015 ; Retrieved October 26, 2019 (interview on the political left).
  12. ↑ Roland Kaufhold : Defense of Freedom: Carlo Strenger pleads for “civilized contempt” instead of political correctness. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . August 17, 2015, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  13. ^ Carlo Strenger: Cynical abuse of tragedy: Marine le Pen and Charlie Hebdo. In: NZZ Online. January 9, 2015, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Quoted from: Tamara Tischendorf: Carlo Strenger - return to the principles of the Enlightenment. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast Andruck - The magazine for political literature. April 27, 2015, accessed October 26, 2019 (review).
  15. ^ Carlo Strenger: Civilized contempt . Suhrkamp, ​​2015, p. 21 .
  16. ^ Carlo Strenger: Civilized contempt . Suhrkamp, ​​2015, p. 50-51 .
  17. ↑ Catherine Newmark: Carlo Strenger: "Those damned liberal elites" - elite analysis by an insider. In: Deutschlandfunk-Kultur broadcast “Lesart”. June 27, 2019, accessed July 9, 2019 (review).
  18. ↑ Publications & CV. In: Carlo Strenger Homepage. Tel Aviv University, accessed October 26, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Strictly, Carlo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-Israeli writer, publicist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 2019
Place of death Tel Aviv