Psychic Life of Power Is Reaction Paper

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What is interesting about this particular assertion is the relationship between the psyche of the individual and the power that spawned it. In several references in The Psychic Power of Life, the author refers to the production of an individual's psyche as an "ambivalent" effect of power -- which of course means that such an effect is not the intended purpose of power, and that people's psyche's are therefore subject to a degree of flexibility and variation since they are merely the bi-product of something inherently larger. This particular belief also points to the nature of the social source of power, which Butler alternately refers to as both concealed and reinforced by the psyches which it is responsible for creating.

Another aspect which The Psychic Power of Life relies upon is the Butler's theory regarding gender identity, which he widely views as a viable social construct.
In fact, by propounding that gender is a social artifice as well as the creation of the psyche which governs one's self, the author is able to relate the entire innate nature of an individual's self-conception to external forces. Furthermore, Butler also contends that the psyche created from these external forces produced by society is not only dependant upon such forces for its existence, but are also highly enthralled by such forces, as can be evinced from the following quotation in which the author asserts that "no subject emerges without a passionate attachment to those on who he or she is fundamentally dependant (even if that passion is 'negative' in the psychoanalytic sense" (Butler 1997, p. 7). It is this sense of attachment that is ultimately responsible for the subjugation inherent within everyone's psyche -- or so the….....

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