The author comments on Horst Petri's case presentation and gives reasons why he sees social criticism within the process of interpretation as inappropriate. Firstly he contradicts Petri's view of the severity of his patient's illness. He thinks a supportive therapy was not appropriate and he would have treated her by using conflict centered interpretations. Secondly he assumes that the analyst's social criticism forms an alliance with the analysand which excludes essential issues from the analytic work. And thirdly he reminds us that psychoanalysis doesn't spare a supposedly progressive attitude from criticism. Within the framework of psychoanalytic theory, the relativity of all value judgements forbids the analyst to tie himself down in the way Petri suggests.
The Depth of the Field
(1993)
The potential of psychoanalysis as social criticism is explored in the context of the major social divides of gender, sexual orientation, race, social class, and ethnicity. It is argued that these divides play central roles in constructing individual psyches, and that their influence is inseparable from other social-familial forces. Further, analyst and patient alike, inevitably enact the imperatives of class, race, gender, and sexuality in the analytic dyad. It is crucial that psychoanalytic theory be extended to account for the formative power of these cultural categories both in the construction of individual identity, and on the course of analytic work. Further, individual psychoanalysts must be aware of cultural countertransference in the analytic engagement. Finally, as a profession we have an obligation publicly to oppose the destructive imperatives of our economic, political, and social systems in the interest of individual and community psychic well-being.
The End of the Modern Era
(1993)
>The Meaning of Work in a Market Economy<: Work has both an economic and a human value. The latter value is downplayed though in capitalist market economies, since these are based on the expropriation of labor, rather than on the self-fulfillment of the workforce. However, entrepreneurial manipulation of labor as a production factor is today tempered, to an extent at least, by an increased need for social integration within the firm or on the factory floor. From the worker's perspective too, work is not a matter a choice but of hard economic necessity. Most contracted activities performed by workers for remuneration are alienated (on several different levels). The author advances the thesis that proprietors are increasingly discovering an interest in having >self-determined< individuals on their staff. This development is, however, problematic if it means, in concrete terms, that individuals are now expected to internalize formerly external mechanisms of exploitation (a dominance-oriented culture, surveillance, ecological indifference, a technology-heavy approach). Yet this development has another aspect: it could also provide real gains in the struggle for greater onthe- job freedom. Both on the individual and collective level, it could end up giving workers greater room for maneuver.
Emancipatory Knowledge
(1993)
The Structural Study of Myth
(1993)
>The Social Roots of Modern Science<: This discussion is predicated on the following theses: - Modern science, and especially physics as it has developed since Galileo and Newton, is not value-neutral. It is therefore not merely science’s practical outlets and technological spinoffs that embody the interests, values and weltanschauung of its practitioners. Rather its specific mode of grappling with nature is, both in its methodology and basic concepts, interest- and value-laden from the outset; moreover, science is rooted in a particular view of the world. The view of the world in which science is grounded, and hence also its fundamental concepts, are socially mediated historical developments. It is from basic social structures, especially those in the socio-economic sphere, that such scientific concepts as space and time, the knowing subject, and objectivized nature, have been won, i.e. they have derived from them central aspects and structural features of their interpretive edifice. The present attempt at a materialistic explanation of modern science seeks to answer the question of how scientific theory formation and experimentation,science’s characteristic mode of grappling with nature, can be construed as an historically conditioned way of conceiving nature. Here Alfred Sohn-Rethals’ theory, according to which economic modalities are >reflected< in human consciousness, proves too narrow an answer. This article mainly draws on Fromm’s pivotal concept of >social character<. Applying the latter to the problem of deriving the basic concepts of natural science, the author offers the following answer: To each specific historically conditioned mode of production there pertains a specific social character – the ego must accept what is incumbent on it, as a social actor, to secure the preservation of society. It is in need of an orientational framework, an object of reverence, an appropriate identity. As far as the ego’s relation to nature within a given production modality is concerned, the image of nature and the basic concepts of natural science communicate an orientational framework to the ego, together with the necessary means, to stabilize the identity required by the production modality.
The Postmodern Condition
(1993)
What Is to Be Done?
(1993)
The Golden Moment: 1945-1963
(1993)
The Idea of the Postmodern
(1993)