“She [his mother] felt that his kicking was deliberate evil and she responded with wishes for an abortion. She also stopped breastfeeding because she felt that the sucking was so strong and aggressive that it was destroying her. Without the father as a triangulating object he had no one to contain this – every child needs a container of his aggression.“
Dr. philos. Siri Erika Gullestad
Oslo
Episode Description:
July 22, 2021 marks the 10-year anniversary of the murder of 77 individuals and the injuring of hundreds more by Anders Behring Breivik – the largest mass murder in Norway since World War II. This was a freely admitted act done under the guise of an extreme right-wing ideology of ‘saving Europe.’ We discuss the role of psychoanalytic hypothesizing in such cases given that “In psychoanalysis, the validity of an interpretation lies in the dialogue with the patient…” We consider the relative importance of individual psychopathology vs cultural ideology with special attention to what leads such an individual to cross over from imagination to action. On the cultural side, it is noted that we face a challenge in recognizing both the value of opening one’s culture to new influences and also honoring the mores and history of one’s traditions.
Our Guest:
Dr. Philos Siri Erika Gullestad is professor emeritus of clinical psychology, University of Oslo, and Training and Supervising Analyst, IPA. She is former Head of the Department of Psychology and former President of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Gullestad is the author of many articles and books in psychoanalysis. Her most recent book, with Bjørn Killingmo, is Theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. Listening for the subtext. Routledge, 2020. Dr. Gullestad was awarded the Sigourney Prize 2019.
Mentioned in This Episode
IPA Off the Couch – www.ipaoffthecouch.org
Recommended Readings
Gullestad, S.E. (2013). Ideological destructiveness. A psychoanalytic perspective on the massacre of July 22, 2011. Division Review, No. 7: 29-36.
Gullestad, S.E. (2017). Anders Behring Breivik, master of life and death: Psychodynamics and political ideology in an act of terrorism. International Forum of Psychoanalysis.
Gullestad, S.E. (2021). Our contempt for weakness. Int J Appl Psychoanalytic Studies, 1-6.
Gullestad, S.E. (2020). The otherness of sexuality. Exploring the conflicted nature of drive, desire and object choice. Int J Psychoanal., 101 (1), 64-83.
Gullestad, S.E. & Killingmo, B. (2020). The theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. Listening for the subtext. London and New York: Routledge.
Bohleber, W. (2010). Destructiveness, intersubjectivity and trauma: The identity crisis of modern psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
Very enlightening and important and useful in understanding right wing ideology and racism in our country
Good and interesting interview.
Very good interview with Dr Gullestad. Our group has published a number of studies on the movement from thought to action in the lone actor terrorist. We have developed an empirically derived and psychoanalytically informed risk assessment instrument, the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18). Papers available at drreidmeloy.com. Also case studies of Breivik, Nidal Hasan, and Tamerlan
Tsarnaev and the nexus between ideology and psychopathology.