File spoon-archives/frankfurt-school.archive/frankfurt-school_2000/frankfurt-school.0004, message 11


From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: Psychoanalysis
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 17:09:28 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)


On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 08:00:19 -0400 Neil McLaughlin <nmclaugh-AT-mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> It is time, I think, to start a serious discussion among contemporary 
critical theorists about the origin myth and conventional wisdom  that suggests 
that Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and later Lasch and Jacobby were right to 
dismiss Fromm's revision of  psychoanalysis.

My impression: laziness (perhaps this is just my excuse). It is easiest to 
reject Fromm via the FSers because it is convenient to do so, and there is 
printed evidence (that one can also avoid reading by living on the reviews) to 
strengthen this conviction. The last thing a good many people, pressed for time 
and energy, are looking to do is take seriously arguments that it would be nice 
not to have to read. This probably has a lot to do with the lack of a popular 
and cliche defence of Fromm. It would be interesting, although tedious, to 
figure out why certain FS authors get read and others don't (perhaps this is 
all just very obvious). The problem, as always, is largely that 
interdisciplinary work, and I don't mean quoting from Weber and Freud and Marx 
in the same sentence, is truly a difficult and daunting task. It is difficult 
enough to keep up with the growing literature on any one of the critical 
theorists - let alone the latest developments in sociology, object relations 
theory, literary criticism, criminology and so on and so on... The structure of 
the University system(s) doesn't make this any easier (at least from my 
perspective as a student). Students are continually pressed into 
individualistic projects, with the rare exceptions of various e-journals that 
have sought to create virtual communities (in light of the impossibility of 
other forms of community and organization) there doesn't seem to be much hope 
for collaborative research (and competition within departments, within 
journals and 'academic' organizations is equally fierce and violent) - although 
I'm quite hopeful about the emerging international resistance that we've seen 
expressed in Seattle and DC recently - esp. the way in which this has been 
organized 'online' and according to an anarchist / affinity group model(s). I'm 
not sure if this will boil over into collaborative theoretical interventions.

> But even a brief look at developments within contemporary psychoanalytic 
thought will find that Fromm's theoretical insights have stood the test of  
time while Adorno and Marcuse's instinct theories seem increasingly outmoded.

Do you have any handy references? One person I recall speaking with mentioned 
something to the effect that psychoanalysis has fallen into disrepute because 
it hasn't had a good idea since the 50s. Which makes me think that critical 
theorists just haven't been looking close enough at the diversity and breadth 
of the field. The most provocative developments in the field, it seems to me, 
are arriving from intersubjective theorists like Jessica Benjamin (Bonds of 
Love, Shadow of the Other, Like Subjects, Love Objects), Lacanians (Copjec, 
MacCannell, Fink, Jameson) and the Slovene Lacanian School (Zizek, Salecl, 
Zupancic, Dolar, Bozovic) who are slowly making their way into North America - 
especially those who are well aware of the Marxian traditions and working to 
find intersections between the psychotic dynamics of capitalism and critical 
theory.

off-hand,
ken


   

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