Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism

by León Rozitchner

Overview

Offering an in-depth interpretation of Sigmund Freud's 'collective' or 'social' works, León Rozitchner insists that the Left should consider the ways in which capitalism inscribes its power in the subject as the site for the verification of history. Thus, after a brief commentary on Freud's New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, the present book provides the reader with a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Civilisation and Its Discontents and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Freud's views, according to Rozitchner's original reading, offer a striking contribution to a materialist theory and history of subjectivity.

This book was first published in Spanish as Freud y los límites del individualismo burgués by Siglo XXI Editores, 1972.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642597851
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	11/29/2022
Series:	Historical Materialism
Pages:	522
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

León Rozitchner (1924-2011) was a major philosopher and militant intellectual in Argentina. After studying at the Sorbonne in Paris with Maurice Merleau-Ponty he returned home only to confront the terror of military coups and dictatorships, which for several years forced him into exile in Venezuela. After the so-called transition to democracy in 1983, he taught for many years at the University of Buenos Aires.

Bruno Bosteels is Professor of Latin American Cultures and Comparative Literature at Columbia Universityand the author of several books on Latin American politics and culture as well as on European philosophy and political theory. He is one of the main translators of Alain Badiou's works in English.

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction 1

Introduction 19

Part 1 The Internal Distance

1 The Articulation and the Breach 27

Part 2 The External Distance

2 Civilisation and Its Discontents 107

I The Historical Categories, Foundation of the Psychic Apparatus 107

II Techniques to Elude the Reality of the External World 120

III Analysis of the Real Obstacle 136

IV The Historical Foundation of the Lack of Discernment 153

V The Negation of Aggressiveness 171

VI Out of Hunger Not Being Capable of Love 190

VII The Halting of Aggressiveness Due to Guilt 209

VIII Ideology, the Concealment of Guilt's True Content 253

IX Transformation of the Fundamental Bourgeois Categories 263

3 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego 290

I Introduction 290

II Critique of the Bourgeois Conceptions of the Group (Continuation) 327

III The Amplification of the Body beyond Dependency 335

IV The Official Institutions Are Groups Congruent with the System 351

V The Discernment Repressed 368

VI The Human Form as Index of the Coherence of the Social System 388

VII Being in Love and Hypnosis: From Individual Dependency to Social Dependency 408

VIII The Return to the Historical Origin 435

IX Dialectic of Collective Forms: From the Primal Horde to the Fraternal Alliance 449

X The Mass, Stage or Battlefield 477

Bibliography 511

Index 512