ABSTRACT

While progress has been made in developing a complex social psychology of globalization, this study has yet to delve in-depth into the two core social psychological tensions that Freud (and we) sees as crucial to the success of society. The first set, which Chapter 7 examined, is sex, sexuality, and gender, including LGBTQI issues. The second set, which is the focus of this chapter, is aggression, violence, destruction, and the death instinct. Our research questions are as follows: (1) How have the social psychological tensions of aggression and death stood in the way of our global commitments? (2) How has globalization in all of its complexity fostered or emboldened these tensions? (3) How have these tensions led to the nontherapeutic and unhealthy defiance of global commitment, and by whom and to what extent? (4) How have these tensions and their defiance, across the ten domains of the global web of life, helped to create the global social psychological problems we currently face? (5) And, finally, how have these tensions, defiances, and global social psychological problems challenged the therapeutic power and healthy resistance of global civil society?