Freud Follow

Freud’s methods may not have been very scientific, but his insights into the social construction of gender and sexual identity were remarkably radical for a middle class man in conservative Vienna a century ago. Socialists can take those radical insights far further, writes Mark O’Brien.

May I welcome the fact that SR has begun a discussion about Freud on its pages? It’s not often that you can find a discussion of psychology, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis on the pages of a Marxist periodical. Can I offer some thoughts by way of contributing to the discussion? 1. A Marxist approach to Freud’s...

Sabby Sagall’s article and Maggie Palmer’s and Iain Ferguson’s letters (September SR) all say that Susan Rosenthal is wrong to completely reject Freud’s ideas. Most of Freud’s ideas are so ridiculous that they would be funny, if they hadn’t led so many people astray, often with tragic consequences. For example, Stephen Jay Gould showed that...

Lucretia Packham’s letter (October SR) replying to my article on Freud contains some rather obscure statements. She agrees with me that it’s important to differentiate the baby from the bathwater in Freud’s work and claims that my attempt to do this is unsuccessful. But she does not offer her own view of the baby/bathwater separation...

It was refreshing to read Susan Rosenthal’s article about Freud (July/August SR). To have Freudian theories placed squarely in a context of capitalist ideology is illuminating. It was not surprising that Socialist Review carried a follow-up article by Sabby Sagall (September). While I would agree that it is important not to throw out the baby...