Psychoanalysis and Social Theory
Jeffrey Prager1992, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
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Abstract
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
