Freud and the American Death Drive by Patrick Blanchfield | Marginalia Rev. of Books

Celebrating the anniversary of Freud’s birth, we must acknowledge his
most paradoxical, difficult, and harrowing legacy: his unflinching
acknowledgement of how the repressed returns whether we like it or not,
in the mode of a drive towards destruction. The simple truth is that
America is founded upon bloodshed, and that as a people, our business
has always been killing each other and ourselves. Another of Freud’s
unfunny jokes was that, in bringing psychoanalysis, he was importing
“the plague.” But that was only metaphorical; the plagues which the
first European settlers carried ashore literally killed tens of
millions. Mock Freud’s parable of the Primal Horde if you will, but our
Declaration of Independence is, as psychoanalyst Lawrence Blum
brilliantly observes, as transparently a pact between sons who have
overthrown their ur-Father as anyone could imagine. The soaring temples
to Freedom in our nation’s capital were built by the hands of slaves,
and the bones of human chattel and butchered Native Americans stir
uneasily beneath our feet.