Our dual inheritance: On psychoanalytic social theory today

Abstract

In a tribute to Werner Boleber, this essay argues that the species of psychoanalytically oriented social theory in which Werner and I have been engaged in is in danger of becoming extinct. The postmodern suspicion of "grand" theories; the psychoanalytic profession's retreat into purely clinical issues; the relational school's desire to provide a more reassuring picture of the human animal; the abstractions and hyper-radicalism of much French psychoanalytic theory that cruises above the workings of concrete social institutions and actual history; and the move away from psychoanalysis by the members of the second and third generations of the Frankfurt School have all contributed to the decline in psychoanalytically oriented social theory Today, then, the desideratum for any acceptable psychoanalytic theory should be clear: It must, as I mentioned, do justice to the prosocial and the antisocial components of psychosocial life, and to the interaction between them. Yes, it is their tendency to deny the extent of the human capacity for destructiveness that makes me uncomfortable with progressive thinkers, inside and outside of psychoanalysis, who overestimate the prosocial forces in human nature. If we do not realistically assess the destructive forces in in our make-up, we cannot devise effective means for countering them.Freud's findings regarding sexuality, aggression, and narcissism with its reality-denying conatus, is that the essential rationality, sociability, and goodness-the pro-sociability-of the human animal cannot be taken for granted.