The sacral revolution: the synthesis of analysis, religion and radical politics. Origins and reception

Abstract

Following a brief introduction to the philosophical climate of the nineteenth century, and understanding psychoanalyis as a late result of the Enlightenment, in the historical first part of this article, the author traces the origins of an opposing tradition that is nearly as old as analysis itself: the synthesis of analysis, religion and radical politics. This synthesis was originally conceived during the meeting, some hundred years ago, of the psychoanalyst Otto Gross with the anarchist Erich Mühsam and his partner, the religious scholar Johannes Nohl, in the Swiss village of Ascona. At the start of modernity, in their first attempts at resacralizing both politics and analysis, these concepts form the very beginnings of a postsecular thinking and in this they point beyond the postmodern. A second part presents the reception of these ideas, before the article concludes with a critical evaluation from today's perspective.

Appealing to “The Better Angels of Our Nature” to Make Love, Not War!

“…It must be well over twenty years ago that Andrew Samuels started to urge a re‐sacralisation of politics, formulated later, for example, in an article “A new anatomy of spirituality: clinical and political demands the psychotherapist cannot ignore” (Samuels, ) (published in an early issue of this journal). Samuels' initiative breathed new life into ideas that Gross and his anarchist friends Erich Mühsam (1878–1934) and Johannes Nohl (1882–1963) had first formulated over a hundred years ago, when they conceptualised a mutually embracing, dialectical relationship between individual relating, radical politics, and spirituality (Heuer, ). Does the work of Martin Luther King (1929–1968) or Desmond Tutu not amply demonstrate the vital role of spirituality in achieving political change?…”

October

“…It is known and documented that in Ascona Gross's anti‐authoritarian rebelliousness received a political framework of anarchist thought when, in 1905, he met there the German anarchists Erich Mühsam (1878–1934) and his partner, Johannes Nohl (1882–1963; see G. Heuer, ). (Later, Mühsam was the first to proclaim the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich in 1919.…”

“…She also led a workshop on this subject. I gave two papers, "The Sacral-Revolution" (G. Heuer, 2009), and a detailed review of the film A Dangerous Method (G. Heuer, 2012). Further presentations included: Dr. Jasbinder Garnerman, Ireland, "The Feminine" and Dr. Giorgio Tricarico, Italy-Finland, "Porn as a Symbol of the Current World" (see Tricarico, 2018) To coincide with the Congress, my book Sexual Revolutions (Heuer, 2011) was published in Russian.…”