๐น๐‘œ๐“Š๐“ƒ๐’น Dark Realms

โ€œFreud sees the collision between psychoanalysis and our penal institutions: โ€˜It is not psychology that deserves to be laughed at, but the procedure of judicial inquiry.โ€™ Reik, in a moment of apocalyptic optimism, declares that โ€˜The enormous importance attached by criminal justice to the deed as such derives from a cultural phase which is approaching its end.โ€™ A social order based on the reality principle, a social order which draws the distinction between the wish and the deed, between the criminal and the righteous, is still the kingdom of darkness. It is only as long as a distinction is made between real and imaginary murders that real murders are worth committing: as long as the universal guilt is denied, there is a need to resort to individual crime, as a form of confession, and as a request for punishment. The strength of sin is the law.โ€

โ€” from Loveโ€™s Body byย Norman O. Brown

1966