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Interacting with this roundtable forum, as well as with the commentaries it has elicited, has been a rewarding experience. I wish to thank the editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives for having convened such a respectful discussion, and my colleagues whose gracious contributions have carried it forward.
In that all of our postulations regarding “first causes” are attempts to conceptualize the unobserved and ultimately unfathomable; it has been reassuring to note that the majority of our views have been held “lightly.” Though held “lightly,” however, I believe that the model of origins we choose must meet the test of compatibility with the theories we reference in the consultation room.
With regard to possible models, I see the commentaries as falling into three categories. I describe my understanding of the divergent viewpoints in terms that establish comparative criteria based on both my Christian narrative and, afterward, on psychoanalytic constructs. My comments will, of necessity, be brief.
Elliot Jurist presents his view of first cause in naturalistic terms. There is, most likely, no “Other” to be acknowledged. Therefore, in essence, we have created ourselves—substance and meaning. In short, we are god.
While Dr. Jurist's arguments are not only respectfully articulated, but are cogently presented, they nonetheless leave certain dilemmas. If we are simply “fancy animals,” (as he has stipulated) which have survived based on fitness in the Darwinian model, then the means of our evolution is the conquest and elimination of that which is inferior. This Darwinian/Nietzschean model offers no intrinsic basis for upward evolution apart from what amounts ultimately to brute narcissism. Nor does it offer a basis for virtue