It's war and we're going

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It's war and we're going is a book by the Swiss doctor and psychoanalyst Paul Parin . It describes the experiences of a group of doctors with the partisans in Yugoslavia towards the end of the Second World War , who were active as a surgical mission for the Swiss Medical and Medical Aid ( Centrale Sanitaire Suisse - CSS ). The plot takes place from autumn 1944 to summer 1946. Parin only wrote the book over 40 years later: in the years 1989 to 1990, shortly before the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The description of the return journey from Yugoslavia via Trieste to Switzerland is deliberately left out in the book. Parin had already presented this a few years earlier in a separate text - "Short stay in Trieste or coordinates of psychoanalysis".

meaning

Parin's book deals - from a psychoanalytical perspective - with the experiences of a temporarily successful social emancipation and its failure. The formative experience of “fraternal socialism ” had to find expression in the originally planned title of the book “Journey to the Edge of Utopia ”. Against the background of the collapse of real socialism , which was just taking place in the years in which the book was written, the concept of utopia seemed to be discredited and unsuitable for a book title.

In addition, the experience of Yugoslavia was an essential impetus for the emergence of ethnopsychoanalysis . As Parin observes in retrospect, he and his wife, Goldy Parin-Matthèy , as psychoanalysts “had not given up utopia, but shifted the political field. (Goldy once put it this way: "For me, psychoanalysis is the continuation of the guerrilla struggle with other means.") "

The description of the eventual return journey goes even further: it links stations on the journey with reflections on the development of psychoanalysis as a whole.

"Socialism with a brotherly countenance"

The doctors of the CSS were deployed in different positions as required. Parin's experience of “socialism with a fraternal face” relates primarily to his work as a surgeon in a hospital on the island of Badija near Korčula . The framework conditions were shaped by a “way of life determined by war, revolution, lack and hope”. A number of principles that everyone had to adhere to also played a formative role in partisan combat. Parin names four of them:

  • Merciless struggle against the occupiers
  • Denial of all antagonisms between the Yugoslav peoples
  • Care for all wounded and sick during the liberation war
  • Prohibition of all love and sexual relationships among fighters

Against this background, Parin emphasizes some characteristic aspects of the utopia that has become real. So there is a strong feeling of togetherness in the fighting force, which is characterized by “brotherly and sisterly relationships”. The equality among brothers or siblings has replaced authoritarian, hierarchical relationships. This applies in particular to the military structures of partisan struggle, from which orders from a superior to a inferior have disappeared: “In guerrilla warfare there are signs, signals, but no orders. The leadership lets you know what should happen. It is the fighters who decide according to the situation, to act according to their decision. ”This is also expressed in the ways in which they interact with one another. "Nobody lets themselves be yelled at, the tone of master and servant is forgotten."

In addition, the economic fundamentals have changed in accordance with the given framework conditions. Life takes place in a kind of distributive economy, with no money or currency . The pursuit of individual economic advantages at the expense of others has become insignificant. “Since everything that was there was distributed and nobody had anything that others lacked, the transition to the other economic system was effortless. ... Imperceptibly we got into the carefree life of primitive or primitive socialism. In such circumstances it is very easy to completely forget what it is like to need money. "

Psychoanalytic view of the failure of utopia

Even before the end of the war, there were increasing signs for Parin that the utopia that had become real will not last. A new state is organized, with an administration, an army, state and secret police . Many former partisan fighters go through training courses with the success that they can now quote passages that they have learned by heart from Stalin's texts . “The pioneers of freedom had suddenly turned into model students.” “They had become dependent, brave and fearful boys, without their own opinion, crammed with buzzwords and empty Marxist formulas.” Hierarchical-authoritarian structures are starting to determine the conditions of life again. As an example, Parin cites an observation made by his wife Goldy Parin-Matthéy, in which a partisan yells at another to close the buttons on his uniform properly and notes: “But the worst is not the screaming, this is the other one follows ... The "New Man" did not emerge from the practice of the combat community. But didn't we live with him? Now he has dissolved from within. ”“ The subject was risen again. ”

Parin sees the following elements in particular responsible for the failure of the utopia:

1. Parin emphasizes the persistence of traditions and the associated authoritarian structures which, at the end of the war, favored classification in the newly created hierarchies. For this purpose, Parin draws on Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic considerations from 1933, in which Freud explained the role of various instances of the “psychic personality” and in particular that of the so-called “ superego ”. Freud sees the super-ego as an instance of introspection, conscience and the ideal function and explains that in the upbringing of children, as a rule, “the rules of one's own super-ego” dominate. Therefore, the “super-ego of the child is actually not built on the model of the parents, but rather the parental super-ego; it is filled with the same content, it becomes the bearer of tradition, of all the time-stable valuations that have been propagated in this way over generations. ”From Freud's point of view, the consequence is:“ Humanity never lives entirely in the present, in the Ideologies of the superego live on the past, the tradition of the race and the people, which is only slowly giving way to the influences of the present, new changes ”. The fraternal socialism of the partisans interrupts this continuum of history, but without overriding it or changing it permanently.

2. From Parin's point of view, this constellation is connected to a second element. The cohesion of the lived utopia was to a large extent established from outside: by the common enemy. When this ceased to exist, "the external enemy was defeated and disappeared, the patriarchal inheritance, the superego with its power of submission and self-punishment in every single person came into play."

3. Finally, Parin already recognizes an inner ambivalence in the pursuit of a utopia . He sees in it both the desire to overcome tradition and the desire to keep it. The pursuit of utopia goes, so to speak, in two directions at the same time: forwards to a better and free life with an emancipation from domination, but also backwards, to the authoritarian structures of the “traditions of home, faith, family”, although these “never really Have brought satisfaction and happiness ”.

On the way to ethno-psychoanalysis

The "contradictions of the liberation struggle", the experience of a lived utopia and its failure led Parin and his wife Goldy Parin-Matthéy to decide to complete a psychoanalytic training themselves and to work as an analyst. Parin and his wife made "the insight into a painful defeat the source of strength for a new effort". As a result, a specific understanding of psychoanalysis was developed that was later referred to as ethnopsychoanalysis. Parin sees this - as "one of the pioneers of ethnopsychoanalysis" - by the fact that it studies "more attentively and intensively ... the social effects on mental processes" than other directions in psychoanalysis.

An important step on this path is Parin's investigation into the “ war neurosis of the Yugoslavs”, a contagious mental disorder, also known as “partisan disease”, which spread among the partisans and at its peak, up to 100,000 people are said to have been affected. With his investigation Parin developed a first psychoanalytic interpretation, which served him as an application for a place in psychoanalysis training.

Parin states that it is a matter of so-called " hysterical attacks" in which the person concerned suddenly begins to stage situations from the partisan struggle in a kind of trance state for no apparent reason . Once the attack is over, the person concerned does not remember anything. Parin, who had observed about 150-200 seizures himself, recognizes that the seizures only occur in liberated areas and everywhere where the prohibition of love and sex from partisan struggle was upheld - in all of Yugoslavia with the exception of Slovenia , where there is none Prohibition and no seizures there. According to Parin's interpretation, the prohibition of love and sex still applies, while in the state of liberation, desires are awakened in men and women that can no longer be suppressed, but which cannot be given in either: “The way out was repression , around then to present the only possible solution to your problems in an unconscious staging: back into the fight, together with trusted comrades, exposed to the dangers of war, but protected from the uncertain future and protected from forbidden wishes, brotherly in the same fate. "

Return trip and reflection on psychoanalysis as a whole

Parin takes the return trip from Yugoslavia via Trieste to Switzerland as an opportunity to reflect on the conditions for the development of “psychoanalysis as a cultural phenomenon” - also written down late (late 1985) in his text Short stay in Trieste or Coordinates of Psychoanalysis , the Connoisseurs consider one of “his best essays”. Parin's considerations lead him to the conclusion that psychoanalysis, by its nature, is not only a method of treatment, but at the same time also an “instrument of radical cultural criticism”. Parin sees psychoanalysis as a “dodgy science” that does not tolerate conformism, namely “that its bearers live in harmony with the illusory values ​​and goals that every institution has and which it has to maintain”. Appropriate work with the means of psychoanalysis presupposes, from Parin's point of view, the willingness “to question one's own culture-specific prejudices and illusions and to rise up as a subversive spirit against the established values ​​of its culture.” It is therefore no coincidence that that psychoanalysis developed from a subculture of Viennese Jews - delimited within bourgeois Vienna - and also not that, from Parin's point of view, "every development step in analysis ... started from dissidents ". Hence the city of Trieste, on the one hand a travel stop on Parin's return journey and on the other hand a symbol for psychoanalysis, since here “hardly any family is in the same cultural traditions and relationships as another” and in such a place “more knowledge of internal connections, more Courage to violate taboos and more criticism against prejudice needs ”.

output

  • Paul Parin: It's war and we're going. With the Yugoslav partisans. With a foreword by Paul Parin to the new edition 1997. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-50417-6 . (first published 1991)

literature

  • Sigmund Freud : New series of lectures on the introduction to psychoanalysis (1932/1933). Lecture 31: The Decomposition of the Psychic Personality. In: Lectures for Introduction to Psychoanalysis and New Series. Study edition Volume 1, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1969, ISBN 3-10-822701-7 .
  • Paul Parin: Short stay in Trieste or coordinates of psychoanalysis. In: Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy: Subject in contradiction. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-04718-6 . (written December 1985)
  • Subject in contradiction. A conversation with Goldy Parin-Matthèy . In: Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy: Subject in contradiction. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-04718-6 . (first published 1984)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Parin: It's war and we're going. With the Yugoslav partisans. With a foreword by Paul Parin to the new edition 1997. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-50417-6 , p. 217. (first published 1991)
  2. ↑ Paul Parin: Short stay in Trieste or coordinates of psychoanalysis. In: Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy: Subject in contradiction. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-04718-6 . (written December 1985)
  3. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 224.
  5. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 134.
  6. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 134.
  7. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 154.
  8. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 155.
  9. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 109.
  10. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 206.
  11. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 150.
  12. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 209.
  13. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, pp. 206f.
  14. ↑ Widmar Puhl: Paul Parin: It's war and we're going. Review. on: literaturwelt.de
  15. ^ Sigmund Freud: New series of lectures for the introduction to psychoanalysis (1932/1933). Lecture 31: The Decomposition of the Psychic Personality. In: Lectures for Introduction to Psychoanalysis and New Series. Study edition Volume 1, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 504f.
  16. ↑ Freud: New series of lectures for the introduction to psychoanalysis. 1969, p. 505.
  17. ↑ Freud: New series of lectures for the introduction to psychoanalysis. 1969, p. 505.
  18. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 11.
  19. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 232, see also p. 137.
  20. ^ Detlev Claussen: Parin's psychoanalysis as partisan struggle. In: Tages Anzeiger. May 19, 2009.
  21. ↑ Subject in contradiction. A conversation with Goldy Parin-Matthèy. In: Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy: Subject in contradiction. Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-04718-6 , p. 255. (first published 1984)
  22. ^ Claussen: Parin's psychoanalysis as partisan struggle. In: Tages Anzeiger. May 19, 2009.
  23. ↑ Ludger Lütkehaus: In search of a conflict-free pleasure. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. May 19, 2009.
  24. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 193.
  25. ↑ Subject in contradiction. A conversation with Goldy Parin-Matthèy. 1988, p. 258.
  26. ^ Paul Parin: The war neurosis of the Yugoslavs. ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Swiss Archive for Neurology and Psychiatry. (1948), 61, pp. 3-24. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.paul-parin.info
  27. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 188.
  28. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 192.
  29. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 189.
  30. ↑ Parin: The war neurosis of the Yugoslavs. 1948, p. 9.
  31. ↑ Parin: It's war and we're going. 1991, p. 191.
  32. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 7f.
  33. ^ Claussen: Parin's psychoanalysis as partisan struggle. In: Tages Anzeiger. May 19, 2009.
  34. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 35.
  35. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 36.
  36. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 35.
  37. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 35f.
  38. ↑ Parin: Short stay in Trieste. 1988, p. 35.