1.27. Intoxication: Creativity, Destruction, and Transference This essay was stimulated by two passages out of Nietzsche's book, Twilight of The Idols (originally published in 1895). The passages were on the connection between the psychology of the artist -- and intoxication (meant symbolically or loosely, not literally). This passage lays down the gravel for what Freud would later pave over with the latter's concept of 'sublimation' -- which connected man's work energy with underlying (unconscious) sexual energy. I will modify Nietzsche's-Freud's idea of sublimation by connecting artistic energy to 'transference energy' -- which we will define shortly and which may or may not include 'sexual energy' -- but to be sure, often does. In this regard, this essay will offer a brief introduction to the fascinating discussion of 'transference' which we will come back to in our later more extensive discussion of transference as it pertains to our discussion on dialectic psychology. First, the two passages by Nietzsche from Twilight of The Idols (1895): Towards a psychology of the artist. -- For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiolgical pre-condition is indispensible: intoxication. Intoxication must first have heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before that happens. All kinds of intoxication, however different their origin, have the power to do this: above all the intoxication of sexual excitement, the oldest and most primitive form of intoxication. Likewise, the intoxication which comes in the train of all great desires, all strong emotions; the intoxication of feasting, of contest, of the brave deed, of victory, of all extreme agitation; the intoxication of cruelty; intoxication in destruction; intoxication under certain meteorological influences, for example the intoxication of spring; or under the influence of narcotics*; finally the intoxication of the will, the intoxication of an overloaded and distended will. -- The essence of intoxication is the feeling of plenitude and increased energy. From out of this feeling one gives to things, one compels them to take, one rapes them -- one call this procedure idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealization does not consist, as is commonly believed, in a subtracting or deducting of the petty and secondary. A tremendous expulsion of the principle features rather is the decisive thing, so that thereupon the others too disappear. In this condition one enriches everything out of one's own abundance: what one sees, what one desires, one sees swollen, pressing, strong, overladen with energy. The man in this condition transforms things until they mirror his power -- until they are reflections of his perfection. This compulsion to transform into the perfect is -- art. Even all that which he is not becomes for him none the less part of his joy in himself; in art, man takes delight in himself as perfection. (Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, Penguin Books, This edition with a new introduction published 1990.) (*This raises the disturbing question: Much like today's baseball steroid scandal, and knowing that Freud was involved with cocaine, the question needs to be asked: How much of Freud's writing -- if any? -- was written under the influence of cocaine. How much would the answer to this question affect the credibiltiy of Freud and his work?; how many of yesterday's great performances by people -- athletes, entertainers, artists, musicians, intellects -- who we revere today for these performances -- were actually performing high, and to what extent would our judgment of these performers and their performances be judged differently if we knew that they were high? Should the performances still stand in their own right -- to be judged for what they accomplished in their own right -- or should we view and judge them totally differently, take away all the credibility of these performances, based on the context of what and where they came from?) So stepping away from Nietzsche but borrowing from him his idea that all forms of intoxication stem from a feeling of exreme excitability or agitation of either an extremely postive or extemely negative type. From this, we can summarize and using partly Freudian temrinology, say: All artistic intoxication stems from a feeling and an impulse of either narcissistic infatuation and fixation; and/or narcissitic tragedy or traumacy. I think for example off the top of my head of the mothers who started the MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) Program, and you don't have to reach too far to realize where the intoxication (poor choice of words in this case) energy came from and their resulting 'barrage of swollen compensatory transference activity. A man's work -- and expecially his or her obsessive, creative work -- is a projection of who he or she is, what he or she is obsessively thinking about, feeling, striving for, at a conscious or subconscious level -- and the creative work, the art form, both hides and alludes to the nature of the person's underlying 'transference complexes'. ( a term that we will develop in a later section). Scenes of peace are often compensatory measures for the artist's personal experiences of some level of war and strife. The art form -- created through the progression of the transference complex -- becomes the individual's perhaps abstractified but very personal form of self-pschotherapy. The art form explodes from the narcissistic fixation -- until the narcissistic fixation can be properly worked through and integrated into the rest of the personality. The swinging pendulum again. I will leave this area of thinking as a 'philosophical and psychological tease' for now but we will come back to it in the psychology section on 'transference'. For now, jsut let me say that we all have to find a way to live in this world more peacefully and harmoniously with each other, and in this regard we always have first and foremost, a choice between attempted force, manipulation and/or coercion vs. creative diplomacy, democracy, and humanistic-existential negotiation. There is a very important difference between 'blind', short-sighted, narcisisistic' evolution (or regression) vs. humanistic-existential evolution in which certain particular human values of decency, democracy, compassion, and accountability are held to be of the highest importance. There is a difference of the utmost importance between Narcissistic Capitalism and Humanistic-Existential Capitalism just as there is a difference between Narcissistic Socialism and. Humanistic-Existential Socialism. One system -- regardless of whether it is based on Capitalist or Socialist principles -- cherishes human rights and values; the other system squashes them. It is not enough for some quasi and/or pseudo-democratic principles to exist in a political system; these democratic principles need to be constantly refreshed and expanded (or else they will constrict and disappear under the more negative human impulses of unadulterated narcissism and a personal and/or collective Will To Power. Plus these same expanded democratic principles need to be expanded in the legal system, in our businesses, and most importantly, in our homes. The dialectic needs to be developed and nourished in a creative, democratic, healthy fashion or it will disappear in the oblivion of unchecked human narcissism and a will to power. db, August 21st, 2006. David Gordon Bain, Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism dgbainssky@yahoo.com