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This essay proposes to examine a limited number of critical assessments regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis with reference to intents and purposes, claims and disclaimers, contrasting views of what constitutes a science and the nature of scientific thinking and how these might apply to psychoanalysis epistemologically. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with criticisms that have been leveled against psychoanalysis from those who insist on absolutist testing for what some call true science, particularly on the part of those who are not practitioners of the art. It wonders about the concern with scientizing by those who actually practice it, or value it in some way or another. It suggests an open minded approach without premature or even warranted closure on the subject of human beings and of ways of getting to know them, let alone understanding them and perhaps being of help to them.
Johan Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887) was a Swiss anthropologist and sociologist whose 1861 book, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World is best known for his radical claims that matriarchy preceded patriarchy, and that matriarchy is the source of human society, religion, and morality. Scholars have acknowledged Bachofen’s influence on a long list of writers, including but not limited to: Lewis Henry Morgan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Friederich Engels, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Joseph Campbelll, Emile Durkheim, Carl Gustav Jung, Thorstein Veblen, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Pitirim Sorokin. The focus of my thesis is to bring attention to Bachofen’s influence on the early sociologists (Engels, Durkheim, Tonnies, Sorokin), and more importantly, on the later sociologists and other social scientists whom these early sociologists in turn influenced, including: David Riesman, Talcott Parsons, and Jean Baudrillard.
This thesis attempts to advance the underappreciated thought of Erich Fromm as both a crucial contribution to twentieth century intellectual history and a potentially pivotal point from which to transcend current theoretical impasses. In particular, I argue that Fromm's radical humanism can participate in the rejuvenation of contemporary social theory, which is still largely constrained by the dual reductionism of positivism and poststructuralism, and that a return to it will encourage renewed theorising of, and empirical engagement with, the connections that obtain between the >psychological< and the >social<, the >essential< and the >constructed<, and the >is< and the >ought<. I try to show that Fromm's qualified essentialism and ethical normativism are sensible, viable, and desirable, and that they, coupled with his analytic social psychology, which is based on his underlying humanism and elaborated through a unique fusion of Marx and Freud, provide the basis for the development of practical strategies to realise humanism in the world. Perhaps above all, I try to show that there is a deceptive complexity and sophistication to Fromm's ideas, which are all too often taken as simple and naive.
The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the influence of the social unconscious on human beings in a future context. In psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's view, the social unconscious refers to Individuals who are afraid of being separated from the society they live in, they often adapt and distort their human needs to meet the requirements of our social system. However, with the strengthening of personality and self-awareness in our present society, how will the relationship between the social subconscious and people's self-awareness change in the future? This is the key issue of this thesis. In the first part, by studying the definition of the social unconscious and related works, this thesis tries to understand the root cause of the influence of the social unconscious and how it affects people's behavior and decision-making. In the second part, this thesis makes an in-depth study of Cyberpunk and objective imagery in related works, revealing that Cyberpunk is a projection of the real world, and clues for many problems in the real world can be found in the Cyberpunk world. In the third part, this thesis explores the changes in people's consciousness in the Cyberpunk world. Finally, this thesis concludes people will not be rid of the influence of the social unconscious whether in the real world or the future world. Even as people's self-awareness is constantly enhanced, self-awareness and social unconscious will always exist as contradictory to one another.