Available at the very special rate of $9.95 (list $25.00). CLICK HERE for information on getting your copy at this special price. Publisher: Library of Social Science Author: Richard Koenigsberg ISBN-13: 9780915042203 List Price: $25.00 Discount Price: $9.95 National Unity as Bodily Fantasy Hitler declared to German youth: “You are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. You are all one, belonging to me.” Symbiosis is not an infantile “phase of development.” It is a fantasy that structures our relationship to the nation: the dream of unity. People as one: many bodies contained within a single—omnipotent—body. Psychic Roots of Culture Culture is not an autonomous domain of reality. It is not a question of human beings, on the one hand, and society on the other. We are deeply implicated in the creation of cultural forms: they are not separate from us. Reviews A very thoughtful and perceptive analysis of the interplay of unconscious phantasy and cultural phenomena. —Thomas Ogden, M.D., author of The Matrix of the Mind I was very impressed by this fascinating book. —Frances Tustin, author of Autism and Childhood Psychosis Koenigsberg performs the valuable service or revealing hitherto obscure links between early omnipotent ideas and the omnipotence people ascribe to their religion, nation, and other cultural institutions. —Journal of Psychiatry and Law

Symbiotic Fantasy

Margaret Mahler’s concept of “symbiosis” has generated confusion and controversy. Is there a symbiotic phase of development? Does the infant imagine he or she is “at one” with the mother—or is there a sense of separateness from the beginning?

In Symbiosis and Separation, Dr. Koenigsberg suggests that the best way to think about symbiosis is as a fantasy with us throughout our lives—that structures our relationship to society and reality.

Mahler defined symbiosis as the “delusion of a common boundary between two separate individuals.” Symbiosis is the fantasy that the other is contained within—part of—the self; that self and other are “one.”

Symbiotic fantasy, according to Koenigsberg, begins with the delusion that the mother is omnipotent and exists as an extension of oneself. Insofar as the mother is imagined to exist as part of oneself, one feels protected—and that gratification is automatic.

The Trauma of Separation

At a certain point, the child realizes that the mother is a separate being—producing traumatic shock and anxiety. This has nothing to do with what the mother does. Separation constitutes an existential blow: recognition that the omnipotent object is not bound to the self; one is a small, frail and singular being.

Separation-individuation may be understood as loss of the illusion that the other is part of the self. Realization of separateness represents a blow to one’s narcissism. The ego deflates. One becomes a shrunken version of what one imagined one was.

Symbiosis and Separation is a study of how we come to terms with separation—how we use objects in culture to mend the wound to our narcissism: recreating a sense of omnipotence through our relationship to culture. Objects in reality replace the original love object. Cultural activities revolve around recovery of lost omnipotence.

The Human Body Becomes a Body Politic

Koenigsberg focuses on nationalism as a cultural form functioning to resolve the trauma of separateness and recapture the dream of omnipotence. In our struggle to cure the wound of separation, we bind our identities to countries. One’s nation becomes a substitute for the lost other. We tie our self to a new omnipotent object.

Having been compelled to abandon infantile fantasies of omnipotence, we embrace another fantasy of omnipotence by imagining we are bound to our nation. The dual unity of self and mother becomes the dual unity of self in country. One recovers infantile omnipotence by “identifying” with one’s grand and glorious nation, generating a new form of narcissistic omnipotence.

Mahler’s says that symbiosis involves somatopsychic omnipotent fusion. In other words, symbiotic fantasy implies bodily as well as psychic union. The term “dual unity” conveys the idea of two entities contained within a single body. Projected into the ideology of nationalism, symbiotic fantasy leads to the feeling of one’s own body being fused with one’s nation: the human body becomes a body politic. The nation represents a gigantic “container” in which the bodies of citizens are massed inseparably together.

Nazism as Bodily Fantasy

Symbiosis and Separation is illuminated by Koenigsberg’s research on Nazism. Hitler declared to German youth: “You are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. You are all one, belonging to me.” People came to his speeches as enemies, Hitler said, but after a three-hour speech, adherents & adversaries “fused into a single enthusiastic mass.” In order to relieve Germany’s distress, Hitler insisted that men be “thrown into the great melting pot, the nation,” so that they might be “welded one to another.”

Nazi ideology represents a case study in the actualization of symbiotic fantasy in culture. Hitler imagined the youth of Germany as “flesh of his flesh;” believed his speeches acted to fuse people into an “enthusiastic mass;” urged men to become “welded one to another.”

Hitler’s fantasy was that each and every German bind together to form a single body politic: many would become one. Nazism represented the desire to realize or actualize symbiotic fantasy: to weld people together into a single, omnipotent body. Nazism sought the recovery of narcissistic omnipotence through identification with the nation.

Psychic Roots of Culture

Hitler and Nazism are not unique in their attraction to the ideology of nationalism—the desire to actualize symbiosis in the real world. Many human beings imagine that a psychosomatic tie binds them to their nation. A soldier who is willing to “die for his country” enacts the fantasy that there is no separation between his own body and the body politic.

Symbiosis and Separation lays the groundwork for a psychological theory of society. Koenigsberg shows that culture does not constitute a domain of reality separate from human beings. Discourses do not emanate from a place outside the self. Rather, we are deeply implicated in the cultural forms that we create. They are not separate from us.

Nationalism and other societal forms help us come to terms with separation-individuation. As we struggle to break from infantile attachments and move into reality, we bind ourselves to cultural objects—new connections that help to “get us out.” We abandon infantile omnipotence under the condition that we can achieve omnipotence through identification with our country and culture. The dual unity of self and other is replicated and reproduced in the unity of self and country.

Nations embody a delusion held in common by members of society: a shared symbiotic fantasy. Symbiotic fantasy is not an obscure “phase of development.” It is the foundation of culture; the ground of our being.

Table of Contents

1. The Dual Nature of the Human Ego
2. The Conversation Process as a Response to Separation
3. The Denial of Separateness
4. Internalization
5. The Struggle for Separateness
6. The Fantasy of Merger as a Source of Anxiety
7. Conflict and Ambivalence Surrounding Separation-Individuation
8. The Transitional Object and the Struggle to Separate
9. Culture as a Transitional Object
10. The Bodily Roots of the Symbol
11. The Bodily Roots of Culture
12. Repression