The Insanity of Normality

[Isobel]

The Insanity of Normality - Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness (Autor: Arno Gruen)

Did anyone read this book or from the same autor "The Betrayal of the Self"?

"In The Insanity of Normality, the psychoanalyst Arno Gruen challenges the assumption, made popular by Freud in the twentieth century, that humans are born with an innate tendency to destruction and violence. Gruen argues instead that at the root of evil lies self-hatred, a rage originating in a self-betrayal that begins in childhood, when autonomy is surrendered in exchange for the "love" of those who wield power over us. To share in that subjugating power, we create a false self, a pleasing- to-others image of ourselves that springs from powerful and deep-seated hopes of being loved and fears of being injured and humiliated."


http://www.arnogruen.net/

 

[Laura]

Sounds very Gurdjieffian!

 

[Isobel]

Well, the book is not just about psychopaty but culminates in its analysis. It has a lot of examples of the nazism. The author quotes books such as The Mask of Sanity, The Banality of Evil, Peer Gynt and others. Arno Gruen gives numerous examples of literature to illustrate his thesis. And also give examples of Ronald Reagan, Hitler, Eichmann, Himler, etc.

The author's thesis is that good behaviour sometimes hides people without a soul - destructive people. And the world is ruled by them. They are in politics, they are CEO's, they are in bureaucracy, ... They deny sentimental world and are obsessed with "normality".

For me this book was a revelation because when I read it I knew someone who everybody thought he was a very correct person. Yet I knew is was full of violence.It is a good book to explain successful psychopaths, for example.