Freud’s social theory

Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis, 2021

The book, ‘Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis’ (ISBN 978-87-4303-717-0) is published, available in Denmark and Germany, and will be promoted in Britain, America, and Canada. A synopsis of the book is contained in the pdf along with text samples from the book. The book runs from the records of the Freud family in Pribor, the Jewish Enlightenment from a center not too far of in Tysmenitz which, influenced Freud’s parents and his early years. His first three years were actually spent with a Catholic nanny which left him relatively positive to the Catholic faith but his family's beliefs in Judaism were strongly rejected. This, plus his reports of some sexualization in Freud records, leaves him with early sexual attachments to his mother and anger against his father - his response to his family was therefore rooted in Oedipal dynamics. Sexual theories of the time, including Havelock Ellis, von Krafft-Ebbing, and Albert Moll also play a part in his theory of libido. He also seems to hold to such templates where two mothers are present and with birth confusion, he records two possible fathers. Freud’s Oedipal theory established at age three, occur simultaneously when Freud significantly lost his nanny and returned to his mother. These factors become evident in his works up to and including his last work, Moses and Monotheism. A significant amount of Freud’s works are discussed including, the psychosexual stages, Leonardo da Vinci, Totem and taboo, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In this last section, there are brief entries describing the main ideas of those who met with Freud in Vienna on Wednesdays. These are the ‘discontents’ where despite stormy meetings, some remained as Freudians, and some, like CG Jung and Alfred Adler, go their own way. We then have a ‘diaspora’ of psychologists which, gives rise to the modern world of psychology and its disciplines as we find it.

Religion, 1977

"Analyze any human emotion, no matter how far it may be removed from the sphere of sex, and you are sure to discover somewhere the primal impulse, to which life owes its perpetuation." Sigmund Freud.

Political Theory, (February, 1984).

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1992

A sociologically trained social psychologist engaged in theoretical and clinical work in psychoanalysis is likely on occasion to be asked by his sociologist colleagues to account for what sometimes appears to them to be an eccentric, if not slightly suspect preoccupation on the part of a sociologist and to explain how he manages or fails to reconcile two paradigms often regarded as unrelated or even antithetical. Recently, for example, I was asked by a colleague to speak to her class on the topic of "the relevance of Freud for students of social theory." On reflection it occurred to me that this manner of formulating the topic could be regarded as expressing a degree of skepticism regarding the thesis I was expected to defend-a skepticism that may well be representative of the attitude of many sociologists toward psychoanalysis. By way of comparison, it is rather unlikely that anyone would be asked to discuss the relevance of Marx or Weber for students of social theory for in most quarters this is taken for granted. Yet, although Freud is acknowledged as one of the architects of modern thought and sensibility, and despite the important work of a wide range of psychoanalytically oriented sociologists, he is a somewhat unsung hero-perhaps even an antihero-in sociology. #1 Freud remains a figure more likely to be honored through the rituals of refutation than those of affirmation, or honored only indirectly, and often with considerable distortion, in the work of his self-styled followers in Freudo-Marxism and critical theory. #2 Since I for one cannot see how psychoanalysis can avoid being of central

2015

This essay presents a balance that hopes to show that despite the impasse between dissimilar discourses, the Freudo-Marxist mission does allow us to salvage its philosophical and practical program so as to continue rethinking the postures that led to the difficult encounter between two discourses: psychoanalysis and Marxism, their theoretical principles and their political consequences. This approach demands the discussion of four moments: 1) the Freudo-Marxist pronouncement; 2) Wilheim Reich’s Sex-Pol mission; 3) Gérard Pommier’s Freudo-Marxism; and 4) its political legacy.

One of the most original and sometimes neglected contributions of Freud's late mental topography was the resulting transcendence of the old debates on man as 'by nature social' or as 'by nature antisocial' and the casting of a new and uniquely illuminating light on the relationship between the individual and his social environment. By splitting the mental apparatus into three interacting but distinct mental agencies, Freud achieved more than a clear articulation of mental dynamics—he developed a complex and compelling view of the individual as both internalizing and resisting culture, and a view of society as both part of the individual and as an externality confronting him as an alien force. For what else does each of the three protagonists of the mental apparatus represent if not a distinct facet of the individual's ambivalent relationship to his social environment? The id, with its blind defiance of all external considerations, stands in direct opposition to cultural requirements; these requirements are nonetheless internalized in the superego, with its slavish and uncritical devotion to external law; and the ego, with its compulsive urge towards mastery and control of externality, stands for yet a different facet of the same relationship between individual and society. Far from abstracting the individual from his social milieu and concentrating on mental dynamics, it seems to me that Freud's theory is in its very essence social, addressing not only the issue of how individuals cope with the social forces which constantly act on them but also how culture tolerates the unruly instinctual endowments of the individuals, forever taming them, modifying them and redirecting them in furtherance of social aims. Freud's towering intellectual achievement in this respect is the substantiation of the proposition that all civilization has been based on two indispensable pillars: first, the systematic frustration, manipulation and suppression of human desires, and, second, on the provision of an endless string of emasculated substitute gratifications, ideals and illusions. As a result each individual suffers from a variety of discontents and illusions, which can be regarded as the main costs of civilization to the individual. Locked in a vicious circle, discontents and illusions decide the human predicament: the illusions deepen the discontents for which they ostensibly offer consolations. This proposition not only places the clinical concept of neurosis at the heart of the relationship between individual and society, but also places Freud in the middle of two century-old debates—the debate concerning the nature of man as a social animal, and the debate on the causes of human suffering and the preconditions for eventual redemption. The first purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that far from centring on the individual, Freud's thought is in its essence social and that it represents one of the most advanced positions in our understanding of civilization, its illusions and discontents. I will then examine whether Freud's discussions of culture reflect the specific conditions of his historical epoch and of his cultural milieu or whether they apply equally to all cultures. In particular, I will argue that while different cultures generate their own unique medley of discontents and illusions, these result from certain constraints and processes common to all cultures. Finally, I will suggest that although the demands of the technocratic consumer society may have shifted away from those studied by Freud, our culture is free of neither discontents nor illusions—and that the mode of bringing them to light and subjecting them to criticism remains the same. ————————————— (Ms.

WHAT IS PSYCHOANALYSIS?