Colloquium: Amoral, Immoral, Hypermoral: A History of the Emotional Economies of Post-Traumatic Disorders

The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its summer semester 2019 colloquium:

José Brunner, Tel Aviv University

Amoral, Immoral, Hypermoral: A History of the Emotional Economies of post-traumatic Disorders

A closer look at 150 years of etiologies of post-traumatic suffering reveals that they carry two distinct but interrelated emotional economies. A primary, amoral economy explains the onset of post-traumatic disorders by an excess of stress, anxiety or fright. However, explanations of prolonged post-traumatic disorders invoke an additional, secondary economy, which refers either to an excess of emotions that are generally considered moral, such as guilt or shame, or to emotions that tend to be regarded as immoral, such as greed, anger or envy.

José Brunner is Professor Emeritus at the Buchmann Faculty of Law and the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel Aviv University. He is the author of more than 100 scientific publications, among them two monographs: Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis (Blackwell, 1995) and Die Politik des Traumas. Gewalterfahrungen und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina-Konflikt (Suhrkamp, 2014). Currently he is working on a global history of trauma. Brunner is in Berlin as a visiting professor at the Sigmund Freud PrivatUniversität.