Secondly, I propose that the historical circumstances of American capitalism undermine and distort the healthiest developmental potential of the dialectics of subject(sl with object(s) and objectivity. Furthermore, these circumstances justify, or even laud, the subject-object relationships which result. This condition of justified distortion is termed an extenuated dialectic. Its origin may be traced in substantial part to the self-maintenance necessities of capitalism, particularly those flowing from an attenuation of public and private realms of life.
Third, I propose that the concrete (such as institutional structures) and abstract (such as ideas) psychosocial repercussions in American society of the dynamic sketched by the second proposal are often incongruent. both with one another and with the healthiest developmental possibilities as suggested by psychoanalytic object relations. It is argued that, by understanding the invariably complex, usually subtle interplay of these three thesis components, prominent and everyday features of American culture may be meaningfully characterized and analyzed as alienation of individual lives from human life.
Some Postulates Underpinning These Proposals
The prime postulate for the construction of my three proposals follows: for one’s and others’ personal and social lives to make sophisticated sense, there should and needs to be an ascertainable extrapersonal concrete and abstract objectivity that is appropriable by individuals. Investigation of the nature, construction, and meanings of objectivity and its interplay with subjectivity is thoroughly interwoven with the remainder of this work. Surely it is self-evident that extra-individual qualities such as provision of food and physical safety, or others’ communicative and emotional responsiveness exemplify essential externals for potentially healthy and functional development of individuals. To developing individuals, such qualities impart knowledge, socialization, interpersonal orientation, physical survival, and the like. Ascertainable objectivity, then, dialectically makes/is made by individual subjects, and is essential to human development. This suggests it may be introductorily termed an essence (which later will be recast as meaning.
Essence
Essence is seen as something {and/or something) that inherently vulnerable developing individuals- through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood—can draw upon, contribute to, participate in, and rely upon. And such essence as exists for potential development is certainly immanent to humanity, else it would be an alien essence13–an unsustainable paradox. Lack or shortfall of a coherent, sensible, adaptively dynamic essence is a most fundamental alienation; there remains little but an immature, impulse-ridden, fantasy-suffused, solipsistic self or array of such selves.
Such a state constantly looms not only for an infant or a child, but also for an adult or child-adult adolescent buffeted by regressive winds of isolation. If essence is absent or inadequate, then spurious, seeming-essences may be arbitrarily asserted, by inchoately desperate individuals for lack of anything better, and/or by exploitive elites aiming to accommodate people more effectively to their exploitation.
There is a two-part repercussion of the foregoing postulate. First, little clear, mature, reliable human essence is now either generated or ascertained by most people living in American society, and b) that much of current psychosocial practice, apprehended as “reality,” “human nature,” and the like, not only discourages their doing so, it provides spurious, seeming-essences–such as “consumer”–to accommodate people to their socially necessary personality characteristics, thinking processes and contents, roles, and behaviors.”
