Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation of several twentieth-century critical theory schools of thought that sought to synthesize the philosophy and political economy of Karl Marx with the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. In the Humanities and Social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of Society and Literature, drawing from knowledge across Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Political economy originally was the term for studying production buying and selling and their relations with law custom and government Psychoanalytic theory is a general term for approaches to Psychoanalysis which attempt to provide a conceptual framework more-or-less independent of clinical practice rather Sigmund Freud (ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt born Sigismund Shlomo Freud (May 6 1856 &ndash September 23 1939 was an Austrian Psychiatrist who founded
While the movement to integrate socialist and psychoanalytic theory has taken several forms, each arose during the middle of the twentieth century in the hope of answering this question: why did Fascism have mass appeal? The fact of that appeal confounded much of orthodox Marxist thought. Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the Means of production and distribution Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist and corporatist ideology Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The gist of the answer Freudo-Marxists gave to that question is that the masses have internalized their oppression as suppression. The internalization of the upper class in the minds of the lower class is the super-ego, in the same way that crowd psychology, in particular Freud, considered the leader to work as the masses' super-ego. Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the " Psychic apparatus " defined in Sigmund Freud 's structural model of Crowd psychology, or social facilitation theory, is a branch of Social psychology. The word leadership can refer to Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading
Contents |
Early Freudo-Marxism
The beginnings of Freudo-Marxist theorizing took place in the 1920s in Germany. After some discussions of the topic by the Soviet philosopher V. Yurinets and the Freudian analyst Siegfried Bernfeld, in 1929 the basic Freudo-Marxist text Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis by Wilhelm Reich was published, both in German and in Russian in the bilingual communist theory journal Unter dem Banner des Marxismus. Siegfried Bernfeld ( May 7, 1892 - April 2, 1953) was an Austrian Psychologist and Educator who was a native of Lemberg Wilhelm Reich ( March 24, 1897 – November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. As the end of this line of thought can be considered Otto Fenichel's article Psychoanalysis as the nucleus of a future dialectical-materialistic psychology which appeared 1934 in Wilhelm Reich's Journal Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie. Otto Fenichel (born 2 December 1897 in Vienna; died 22 January 1946 in Los Angeles) was a psychoanalyst of One member of the Berlin group of Marxist psychoanalysts around Wilhelm Reich was Erich Fromm, who later, 1934ff, brought Freudo-Marxist ideas into the exiled Frankfurt School led by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Erich Pinchas Fromm ( March 23, 1900 &ndash March 18, 1980) was an internationally renowned social psychologist, psychoanalyst The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist Critical theory, Social research, and Philosophy. Max Horkheimer (February 14 1895 &ndash July 7 1973 was a German Philosopher and Sociologist, and a founder and guiding thinker of Critical Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno ( September 11, 1903 &ndash August 6, 1969) was a German -born international sociologist
Freud and Marx in Frankfurt
The Frankfurt School (the "Institut für Sozialforschung") took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might serve to clarify social conditions which Marx himself had never seen. They drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's perceived omissions. Max Weber exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud. Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (maks 'veːbɐ (21 April 1864 &ndash 14 June 1920 was a German political economist and sociologist who was considered In the institute's extensive Studien über Autorität und Familie (ed. Max Horkheimer, Paris 1936) Erich Fromm was the author of the social-psychological part. Another new member of the institute was Herbert Marcuse, who became famous only during the 1950s in the USA. Herbert Marcuse ( July 19, 1898 &ndash July 29, 1979) was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a member of
Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955)
Eros and Civilization is one of Marcuse's best known early works. Eros and Civilization is one of Herbert Marcuse 's best known works Written in 1955, it is an attempted dialectical synthesis of Marx and Freud whose title alludes to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur Marcuse's vision of a non-repressive society (which runs rather counter to Freud's conception of society as naturally and necessarily repressive), based on Marx and Freud, anticipated the values of 1960s countercultural social movements. The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 Counterculture (also " counter-culture " is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a Cultural group, or Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of Individuals and/or Organizations focused on specific
In the book, Marcuse writes about the social meaning of biology – history seen not as a class struggle, but fight against repression of our instincts. Class struggle is the active expression of Class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective He argues that capitalism (if never named as such) is preventing us from reaching the non-repressive society "based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations". Capitalism is the Economic system in which the Means of production are owned by private Persons and operated for Profit and where See also Bernard Stiegler, "Spirit, Capitalism and Superego". Bernard Stiegler (born April 1, 1952) is a French Philosopher and Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre
Freud, Marx and humanism
Another member of the Frankfurt School was Erich Fromm, who left the group at the end of the 1930s. The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist Critical theory, Social research, and Philosophy. Erich Pinchas Fromm ( March 23, 1900 &ndash March 18, 1980) was an internationally renowned social psychologist, psychoanalyst
The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book The Sane Society, published in 1955, which argued in favor of humanist, democratic socialism. Year 1955 ( MCMLV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1955 Gregorian calendar) Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements tendencies and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation Building primarily upon the works of Karl Marx, Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of personal freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of classic liberals. Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism, Laissez-faire liberalism, Market liberalism or in much of the world Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing and bureaucratic social structures that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation. Capitalism is the Economic system in which the Means of production are owned by private Persons and operated for Profit and where Marx's theory of alienation ( Entfremdung in German) as expressed in the writings of young Karl Marx, refers to the separation of things that naturally
Althusser's ideology
Louis Althusser is widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Gramsci's theory of hegemony. Antonio Gramsci ('ɡramʃi ( January 23, 1891 &ndash April 27, 1937) was an Italian Philosopher, Writer, Hegemony (hɨˈdʒɛməni (Amer /hɨˈɡɛməni/ (Brit (ἡγεμονία hēgemonía) is a concept that has been used to describe and explain the dominance of one social Whereas hegemony is ultimately determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on Freud's and Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst Many observers throughout history have argued that there are influences on Consciousness from other parts of the Mind. The Mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan 's first official contribution to Psychoanalytic theory (Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Not to be confused with the subiectum or Hypokeimenon in Aristotelianism These structures, for Althusser, are both agents of repression and inevitable - it is impossible to escape ideology; to not be subjected to it. The distinction between ideology and science or philosophy is not assured once for all by the epistemological break: this "break" is not a chronologically-determined event, but a process. Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge Instead of an assured victory, there is a continuous struggle against ideology: "Ideology has no history".
His essay Contradiction and Overdetermination borrows the concept of overdetermination from psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality in political situations (an idea closely related to Gramsci's concept of hegemony). Overdetermination, the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once (any one of which alone might be enough to account for the effect was originally Causality (but not causation) denotes a necessary relationship between one event (called cause and another event (called effect) which is the direct consequence
Commodity and sexual fetishism
Marx's theory of commodity fetishism has proven fertile material for work by other theorists since Marx, who have added to, adapted, or, as Marxist orthodoxy might see it, 'vulgarized' the original concept. In Marxist theory Commodity Fetishism is a state of social relations said to arise in capitalist market based societies in which social relationships Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Sigmund Freud's well-known but unrelated theory of sexual fetishism led to new interpretations of commodity fetishism, as types of sexually-charged relationships between a person and a manufactured object. Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the Sexual attraction to materials and objects not conventionally viewed as being sexual in nature
Deleuze and Guattari, The Anti-Œdipus (1972)
In The Anti-Œdipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari followed up Reich's problem: "why did the masses desire fascism?", which led them to a critique of Freudo-Marxism. Anti-Œdipus (1972 is a book by the French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. Gilles Deleuze ( (January 18 1925 &ndash November 4 1995 was a French philosopher of the late 20th century Pierre-Félix Guattari ( April 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French Militant, institutional Psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich ( March 24, 1897 – November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Working class is a term used in academic Sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe depending on context and speaker those employed in specific fields or types Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist and corporatist ideology In particular, they criticized the dualism between the social and the psychic (desire) reality, declaring that desire is immediately — without any sublimation needed — social. Dualism denotes a state of two parts The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two". In Psychology, sublimation is a coping mechanism It has its roots in the Nietzschean & psychoanalytical approach and is often also referred to as a type This, they claimed, was the condition of a micropolitics, a term close to Foucault's "microphysic of power". Michel Foucault ( (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 was a French philosopher, Historian, Intellectual, Critic and Sociologist. Power is a measure of a person's ability to control the environment around them including the behavior of other people Deleuze and Guattari also criticized the Freudian understanding of the desire as simple lack. Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Œdipus ( 1972) According to them, the psychic reality (desire) is not an imaginary one. Imagination is the ability to form Mental images/sounds/feelings or the ability to Spontaneously Generate images/sounds/feelings within one's own Mind Art, or even use of psychoactive drugs, is not an "escape from reality", as it is often described, because desire and imagination are productive forces, instead of simple representation. A psychoactive drug or psychotropic substance is a Chemical substance that acts primarily upon the Central nervous system where it alters Brain In Politics, representation describes how political power is alienated from most of the members of a group and vested for a certain time period in the hands of a small subset They thus spoke of desiring-production. Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Œdipus ( 1972)
Literature
- Wilhelm Reich, Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis, in Lee Baxandall ed. Lee R Baxandall is an American writer editor and critic He is a retired leader of the Naturist movement , Sex-Pol; Essays, 1929-1934 (New York, 1972).
- Otto Fenichel, Psychoanalysis as the nucleus of a future dialectical-materialistic psychology. In: American Imago, 1967 Winter; 24(4): 290-311
External links
- Otto Fenichel: Die Psychoanalyse als Keim einer zukünftigen dialektisch-materialistischen Psychologie (German original)
See also
Crowd psychology, or social facilitation theory, is a branch of Social psychology. Wilhelm Reich ( March 24, 1897 – November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Herbert Marcuse ( July 19, 1898 &ndash July 29, 1979) was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a member of Gilles Deleuze ( (January 18 1925 &ndash November 4 1995 was a French philosopher of the late 20th century Erich Pinchas Fromm ( March 23, 1900 &ndash March 18, 1980) was an internationally renowned social psychologist, psychoanalystDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic