Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 10:11:06 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: M-TH: movement / Psychoanalysis & Theory of Memory


>Freud needed the "unconscious" to explain where memories went when we were
>not thinking of them; that is, the very foundations of his thought
>presupposed memory as storage. If there is no memory storage, then there
>is no "problem" to which such a mystical concept as "the unconscious" can
>be the solution.
>
>Carrol

I don't think many people regard Freud as a scientist nowadays. Frederic
Crews has been devastating, as have been countless others.

If he has any viability, it as an imaginative writer who should be grouped
with Kafka and Dostoievsky. Psychiatry has no use for him, but the notion
of repression seems germane to this day. Bourgeois society seems to
incorporate shame into the very core of social relations. Sex is shameful.
Open displays of emotion are shameful. Illness, especially terminal
illnesses like AIDS and cancer, invoke feelings of shame.

The trouble with most Freudian writers seems to be an unwillingness to
explore the class and historical dimensions of our group neurosis. When
they do, they often go off on tangents like Reich and Lacan do. There
should be an effort to redeem Freud, but this would start with cutting the
"science" loose once and for all.

Louis Proyect



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