Freudo-Marxism
Encyclopedia
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
.
Freudo-Marxism seeks to use the tools of psychoanalysis to diagnose the ills of society. Just as Freudianism views an individual's ego and super-ego as shaped by his unconscious id, Marxism views a society's culture and institutions as shaped by its underlying economic system. Thus a society's economic system and its relations of production function as its unconscious id; a society's culture functions as its ego; and a society's legal system, police and military function as its super-ego. Form this point, Freudo-Marxism aims to reveal the illness of a society's underlying economic system by analyzing its cultural products.
, 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. 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 in 1934 in Wilhelm Reich's Journal Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie. One member of the Berlin group of Marxist psychoanalysts around Wilhelm Reich was Erich Fromm
, who later brought Freudo-Marxist ideas into the exiled Frankfurt School
led by Max Horkheimer
and Theodor W. Adorno
.
exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud. In the institute's extensive Studien über Authorität 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.
is one of Marcuse's best known early works. Written in 1955, it is an attempted dialectical synthesis of Marx and Freud whose title alludes to Freud's Civilization and its Discontents
. 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.
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. 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". See also Bernard Stiegler
, "Spirit, Capitalism and Superego".
was Erich Fromm
, who left the group at the end of the 1930s.
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
. 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. 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
.
was a somewhat eccentric and philosophically sophisticated French psychoanalyst, whose perspective came to predominate in French psychiatry and psychology. Lacan saw himself as loyal to and rescuing Freud's legacy. Lacan's influence has created a new, if eccentric, cross-fertilisation of Freudian and Marxist ideas.
is widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation. The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Gramsci's
theory of hegemony
. 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
. 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. 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).
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek
has developed since the late 1990s a line of thought which uses Lacan
ian psychoanalysis
, Hegelian philosophy and Marxism. Althusser is also among his references. Particularly important to note here is his The Sublime Object of Ideology
, which deals with the original Freudo-Marxist perspective.
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. 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.
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
schools of thought that sought to synthesize the philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
with the psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory refers to the definition and dynamics of personality development which underlie and guide psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy. First laid out by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work...
of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
.
Freudo-Marxism seeks to use the tools of psychoanalysis to diagnose the ills of society. Just as Freudianism views an individual's ego and super-ego as shaped by his unconscious id, Marxism views a society's culture and institutions as shaped by its underlying economic system. Thus a society's economic system and its relations of production function as its unconscious id; a society's culture functions as its ego; and a society's legal system, police and military function as its super-ego. Form this point, Freudo-Marxism aims to reveal the illness of a society's underlying economic system by analyzing its cultural products.
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 BernfeldSiegfried Bernfeld
Siegfried Bernfeld was an Austrian psychologist and educator who was a native of Lemberg, which is now Lviv, Ukraine...
, in 1929 the basic Freudo-Marxist text Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis by Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
was published, both in German and in Russian in the bilingual communist theory journal Unter dem Banner des Marxismus. As the end of this line of thought can be considered Otto Fenichel
Otto Fenichel
Otto Fenichel was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation".Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna. Already as a very young man, when still in school, he was attracted by the circle of psychoanalysts around Freud...
's article Psychoanalysis as the nucleus of a future dialectical-materialistic psychology which appeared in 1934 in Wilhelm Reich's Journal Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie. One member of the Berlin group of Marxist psychoanalysts around Wilhelm Reich was Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
, who later brought Freudo-Marxist ideas into the exiled Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
led by Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
and Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
.
The Frankfurt School
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 WeberMax Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud. In the institute's extensive Studien über Authorität 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
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, who became famous only during the 1950s in the USA.
Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955)
Eros and CivilizationEros and Civilization
Eros and Civilization is one of German philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse's best known works. Written in 1955, it is a synthesis of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Its title alludes to Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents...
is one of Marcuse's best known early 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
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 , it is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works....
. 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
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
social movements.
In the book, Marcuse writes about the social meaning of biology – history seen not as a class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
, but fight against repression of our instincts. He argues that capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
(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". See also Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...
, "Spirit, Capitalism and Superego".
Freud, Marx and humanism
Another member of the Frankfurt SchoolFrankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
was Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
, who left the group at the end of the 1930s.
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
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
. Building primarily upon the works of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, 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. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and Soviet communism
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
, which he saw as dehumanizing and bureaucratic social structures that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
.
Lacan and Marxism
Jacques LacanJacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
was a somewhat eccentric and philosophically sophisticated French psychoanalyst, whose perspective came to predominate in French psychiatry and psychology. Lacan saw himself as loyal to and rescuing Freud's legacy. Lacan's influence has created a new, if eccentric, cross-fertilisation of Freudian and Marxist ideas.
Althusser
Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
is widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation. The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Gramsci's
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
theory of hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
. Whereas hegemony is ultimately determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on Freud's and Lacan's
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
concepts of the unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
and mirror-phase
Mirror stage
The mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
respectively, and describes the structures and systems that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self
Subject (philosophy)
In philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
. 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. 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
Overdetermination
Overdetermination, the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once , was originally a key concept of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis....
from psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
in political situations (an idea closely related to Gramsci's concept of hegemony).
Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
has developed since the late 1990s a line of thought which uses Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...
ian psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, Hegelian philosophy and Marxism. Althusser is also among his references. Particularly important to note here is his The Sublime Object of Ideology
The Sublime Object of Ideology
The Sublime Object of Ideology is a book by the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek, first published in 1989. The book, which Žižek believes to be one of his best, essentially makes thematic the Kantian notion of the sublime in order to liken ideology to an experience of...
, which deals with the original Freudo-Marxist perspective.
Commodity and sexual fetishism
Marx's theory of commodity fetishismCommodity fetishism
In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
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. Sigmund Freud's well-known but unrelated theory of sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
led to new interpretations of commodity fetishism, as types of sexually-charged relationships between a person and a manufactured object.
See also
- Authoritarian personalityAuthoritarian personality-Historical Origins:Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford compiled a large body of research and theory , which attempted to characterize a personality type that described the “potentially fascistic individual”...
- Crowd psychologyCrowd psychologyCrowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...
- Wilhelm ReichWilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
- Herbert MarcuseHerbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
- Gilles DeleuzeGilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
- Erich FrommErich FrommErich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
- Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
Literature
- Wilhelm Reich, Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis, in Lee BaxandallLee BaxandallLee R. Baxandall was an American writer, translator, editor, and activist, first known for his New Left engagement with cultural topics and then as a leader of the naturist movement.-Career:...
ed., 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)
- David Pavon Cuellar: Marxisme lacanien (French original)