Psychology of the Private Individual
Critique of Bourgeois Consciousness

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• The mistake of bourgeois psychology, and the object of a materialistic psychology

• Part I. The moral individual: How does an abstract free will work?

• On theoretical and practical abstractions

• The subservient use of free will

• Chapter 1: The phony materialism of permissible success

• Psychology denies free will, thereby denying that subservience is the principle of the bourgeois psyche

• Hegel's concept of free will as the idealism of being allowed

• The individual's class position as the individualism of his worldview

• Chapter 2: The idealism of self-control that pays off

• Rule as the sum of good and bad opportunities

• Calculation and disappointment, comparison and criticism

• Chapter 3: Hypocrisy and complaining about the world

• Striving for success in the name of the Good

• The one-sided benefit of hypocrisy: must, should, can, may

• Separation of the theory and the practice of decency

• Decency as lived ideal: Politeness

• Moral materialism. Envy and Schadenfreude

• Chapter 4: The righteous person

• Self-confidence: The virtue of failure and pride in success

• Conscience: Shame and impertinence

• Practical feeling as the organ of prejudice
  The morality of pluralism in science

• The virtue of prudent submission: “Reason.” Heart versus mind, and vice versa

• Virtuosos of good conscience: Nietzsche and the Christian

• Weltanschauung as an honorable substitute for knowledge. Superstition, daydreams and role models

• Morality philosophy-wise: Where would we be, then?

• Moral mania in literature

• Part II. How the bourgeois individual proves his worth in his home, capitalist society

• The “secret” of “second nature”: conforming

• Chapter 5: Bourgeois spheres of life from the viewpoint of the righteous person

• The democrat's servile spirit: Self-assertive championing of prevailing conditions

• The citizen as Mr. Clean

• Criticizing one sphere with the ideals of another

• Chapter 6: Politics — Democratic servile consciousness

• Self-assured submissiveness: the political “we”

• Constructive criticism

• Nation as sentiment and character

• Radical dissent: The fight for the right to criticize
  Crime I: Terror as a just use of force, autonomously

• Education for freedom and responsibility

• Chapter 7: Job — Competition and performance

• From the pressure to compete to the willingness to achieve

• Materialism in competition: the hard worker’s claim to a fair wage

• How people cope with the results of competition

• The ideal of usefulness and the stages of life

• Crime II: The prohibited way to legitimate success

• Chapter 8: Private life: On happiness and its failure in pleasure and love

• The ideal of compensation, and yearning for happiness

• Consumption and leisure time: The right to pleasure, in practice

• The big compensation: Love as the right to be unconditionally understood
  Lovesickness and crime III: Out of passion

• New paths for proving true love

• Competition in love: “So test therefore, who join forever” (Schiller, Song of the Bell)

• Part III. From failure to self-destruction — The realm of psychology

• Conforming as a method

• Chapter 9: Character

• Life as a struggle

• How a character is formed

• How a character goes into action

• Alternatives of dissimulation: Good and bad character

• Ignorance as knowledge of human character

• Characterology based on the ideal of fitness for reality

• Chapter 10: Psychological self-criticism: The techniques of self-assertion

• Self-criticism devoid of substance: “I'm a failure”

• The impertinent self-assurance of damaged individuality

• Psychology in everyday life

• Psychological training

• Bourgeois psychology: A scientific parasite of self-assertion

• Chapter 11: Insanity and normality

• Self-assertion as a purpose: Distinguishing oneself

• Self-abasement as a service: The happiness of the Christian individual

• Totally insane

• Psychiatry

• Chapter 12: Executing psychological self-criticism: Suicide

• Self-complacency in desperation

• Groundless respect for “voluntary death”

• Calculation in suicide: The idealism of spite

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© GegenStandpunkt 2003–2008