Marlene Belilos’ Freud and War offers a compelling account of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of human conflict, focusing on Sigmund Freud’s insights into the nature of war, the human psyche, and the dynamics of aggression. Rooted in Freud’s exchange with Albert Einstein during the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism in the early 1930s, the book delves deeply into Freud’s philosophical and psychological musings on war, death, and human civilization. It incorporates Freud’s seminal work Why War?, his reflections on the primal nature of humanity, and his complex relationship with death, especially as revealed in his earlier writings, such as Death and Us. These writings, which examine the persistence of aggression and destructive impulses in human nature, offer a psychological lens through which to understand the continued presence of war in modern life.
Through an extensive exploration of Freud’s thoughts, the volume also sheds light on the specific intellectual and emotional forces that Freud believed led to the creation of wars. It analyzes how Freud’s theories on the interplay between the life and death drives laid the foundation for understanding not only individual psychology but also the collective mindset that enables entire societies to engage in war. This collection brings to the fore Freud’s critique of civilization, specifically his belief that the underlying forces of human aggression are often repressed or redirected in such a way that they manifest in large-scale conflicts, such as war. Freud’s correspondences with Einstein provide the historical and intellectual context, illustrating his attempt to grapple with the human inclination towards violence at a moment when the world was on the brink of unprecedented upheaval.
The book expands upon Freud’s notion of the ambivalence of human feelings, particularly towards death, as a critical element in understanding how individuals and societies construct their relationship with mortality, violence, and self-preservation. Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, which emphasizes the unconscious and repressed desires, is applied to the problem of war. Belilos explores how the unconscious mind, through its rejection of death and the presence of death wishes, plays a central role in the perpetuation of both personal and collective violence. By examining how humans avoid the acknowledgment of death in everyday life, Belilos underscores Freud’s argument that the avoidance of death’s inevitability in the unconscious psyche eventually leads to its violent eruption on the larger scale of war.
The discussion is not limited to Freud’s theoretical work; it extends to the historical and sociopolitical consequences of these ideas, with particular focus on the disastrous intersection of Freud’s theories and the rise of fascism. Freud’s ironic dedication of Why War? to Benito Mussolini, a gesture meant to address the growing authoritarianism in Europe, is explored in great detail, revealing the tragic irony that while Freud’s work aimed at confronting the destructive nature of war, it was ultimately rejected by the very forces he sought to challenge. The book’s reflections on this historical moment are insightful, contextualizing Freud’s work within the broader intellectual debates of the time, while also exposing the ways in which his thought was perverted and suppressed by political regimes that rose to power during this era.
At the basis of Freud and War is the psychological examination of how deeply ingrained, often unconscious, desires shape our societal structures and our collective capacity for destruction. The contributors to the volume delve into the mechanisms that make war possible by uncovering the role of repressed aggression and ambivalence in human relationships. Freud’s theory that the life and death instincts are intertwined is a key theme, and it is through this lens that war is understood not merely as a political or economic failure, but as an eruption of humanity’s most primal and unconscious instincts. By examining the origins of these instincts, Freud and Belilos offer a stark diagnosis of civilization’s inability to curb the violent tendencies that underpin the collective psyche.
This volume also addresses the psychological toll of war on individuals, both the combatants and the civilians who remain behind. It offers insights into how wars not only alter the external conditions of life but also shift the inner workings of the mind. The contributors trace Freud’s argument that in the context of war, individuals and societies are stripped of their civilized facades and revert to more primal modes of thinking and acting. War, in this view, exposes the fragility of the social contract and forces individuals to confront the deep-seated aggressions and repressed desires they have spent their lives hiding from. This brutal exposure of the unconscious mind through the lens of warfare is both a terrifying and enlightening experience that calls into question the very nature of human civilization.
The volume provides a thorough exploration of Freud’s belief that the roots of war are not external but internal, stemming from the repressed and often unacknowledged parts of the human psyche. Freud’s psychoanalytic model, with its focus on the unconscious, becomes an essential tool for understanding how the collective mind of society can be drawn into conflict. By examining both individual neuroses and collective psychologies, Belilos underscores Freud’s assertion that war is a symptom of a deeper, more pervasive disorder in the human psyche—one that is fundamentally linked to our fear of death, our ambivalence towards love, and our unconscious desires to destroy.
Freud and War provides a comprehensive examination of how the intersection of psychology, politics, and war reveals the darkest corners of human nature. Through Freud’s insights into the unconscious drives that govern both personal and collective behavior, the book challenges the reader to reconsider the nature of human aggression and the inevitability of war in a world shaped by such primal forces. The intellectual contributions of this volume extend beyond Freud’s own work, incorporating diverse reflections on the nature of conflict, the psyche, and the mechanisms of repression, offering a thought-provoking analysis of the complex relationship between humanity’s deepest impulses and the wars that define its history.
Simon Gros 
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