Freud and Marxism.
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This was by a Reichian therapist and SPGB member:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/2021/03/08/sex-in-a-free-society/
There are several writings on Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. The Marxist Humanists have also written hundred of articles on them, specially Dunayeskaya, Peter Audis, Olga, and Kevin Anderson
” The trouble with biological explanations as to which this is so (and Freud, Reich and Marcuse are offering biological explanations based on posited sexual energy) is that they prove too much — if workers have been biological manipulated to support capitalism how could they be changed to reject it? And how did we manage to escape this?”
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If a psychologist treats biology in isolation from society then s/he is of course wrong. And most are.
Thoughts, feelings, inhibitions etc. are both social and biological. Reich knew this, and so did Freud. They both knew that their work with patients was severely limited because of social realities and that any relief brought to any patient was at best a palliative and was temporary.
Reich especially gave free sessions to low-waged workers in the hope of helping them to alleviate some of their mental and sexual misery (which runs alongside and is caused by social misery).And in any case, the socialist, whilst rejecting fallacy in their work, should know how to take on board where they are valid, the same as we should do with any writer, scientist, philosopher and thinker.
We are not absolutists, who reject or accept 100% on the basis of some errors and some truths, surely?I refer you again to “Sex in a Free Society” by Cde. Fleischmann. Who would disagree with this?
We also know that everyone’s formation is different, and their reactions to things too, and that most of these have origins which are buried in one’s past. The formation of a personality is an ongoing chain of feelings and responses both socially and individually conditioned.
Two men are working class and have the same job and the same pay. One is a socialist and one is a nationalist. They went to the same school. One is a “ladies’ man” and the other a shy celibate. One is not fazed by news of an atrocity. The other is deeply depressed by it and cannot sleep. The “ladies’ man” is a sexist. The celibate is respectful of women. The one is frenziedly excited about an upcoming football match. The other is bored sick by it. The one reads books, the other ridicules him for it.
They both exist under capitalism and have been formed under it, but both are very different personalities.I’m sure there are doctrinaire freudians, but it’s the doctrinaire bolsheviks who dismiss psychotherapy out of hand.
Let us not be like them.Like TM I am surprised that we find ourselves on the same side on this one. I couldn’t agree more with what he’s said on this subject. Nobody is suggesting that Freud or Marcuse were correct in everything they said any more than Marx was. We do not reject Marxian historical Materialism because he supported Polish independence. Clearly support for authoritarian social structures is irrational and on the rise amongst the masses and psychoanalysis at least attempts to find reasons for this. ALB’s contention that ‘Nationalism/Fascism is merely an example of false consciousness does not even begin to explain the fanatical hatred and sadism of the Holocaust etc.
“Nobody is suggesting that Freud or Marcuse were correct in everything they said any more than Marx was.”
We might not agree with everything Marx said but we agree with the basics of the Marxian argument. The basic elements of Freud’s work, his model of the mind, his view of psychosexual development is demonstrably wrong. That doesn’t mean that he got everything wrong, just a large proportion of it and most of the foundations of his work.
I’m not saying they are not. I’m saying how do you explain massive personality differences within the same class under the same capitalist system, unless biological (emotional and “personal-historical”, inner and nervous responses to experience) are in play, and not only socio-economic conditions?
If freudians posit the “structure of the mind” as the reason for social reality, that is wrong and is idealism on their part.
But if they understand things as materialists, they will see that the “structure of the mind” is both socially and individually produced, and that different personalities result from different responses to both external and internal happenings. The different responses that people have determining personality will stem from a long chain of individual experience and response, mostly subconscious and forgotten, stretching back into their life history from infancy.Phobias, as opposed to rational fears, will have such subconscious origins, although the phobia itself is known. The same goes for coping with sexual feelings or not, and the attraction for certain modes of thought as opposed to others.
BD – ‘ The basic elements of Freud’s work, his model of the mind, his view of psychosexual development is demonstrably wrong.’
Would you disagree with Freud’s contention that the unconscious mind has a vital role in character formation and that irrational behaviour has its roots in the repressions that stalk the unconscious? In contrast to you I believe those foundational elements are demonstrably correct. As with history, politics, economics and philosophy I am comforted that my/our non mainstream perspective is rejected by the related ‘establishments’ of those disciplines. That the psychological establishment rejects Freud’s theories enhances my interest in them.
Both Freud and Reich went off on tangents later in their thought. That should not make us reject their ideas out of hand.
I think I posted this the last time we discussed this:
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