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Freud and Recent Sociological Theory: the Frankfurt School

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Freud and Modern Society

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Abstract

Apart from the work of Talcott Parsons, there have been no major attempts systematically to link Freud’s theory with mainstream sociology. The work of the Frankfurt School is now coming into the mainstream of sociological theory, with the breakdown of positivistic schools of sociology. Critical theory is the only alternative base for sociological theory to that of positivism in all its varieties, apart from the phenomenological approaches which have recently emerged and been developed, for example, by Cicourel, Berger and Luckmann.

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Notes and References

  1. See D. Cooper and R. Laing, Reason and Violence, London, 1964.

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  37. Reprinted as the Epilogue in Eros and Civilization.

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  43. See, for instance, MacIntyre’s criticism in Marcuse, London, 1970, Chapter 4. See also H. Marcuse’s essay, ‘Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society’, first published in Negations, New York, 1968, which is more specific, being written during the Vietnam War.

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  48. See D. Holbrook, Human Hope and the Death Instinct, Oxford, 1971.

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  51. Ibid., p. 106.

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  52. Ibid., p. 40. See also D. de Rougement, Passion and Society, London, 1956. A brilliant analysis of Tristan and Isolde myth.

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  56. For this reason Freud is in part a conservative thinker in political matters.

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  61. Ibid., p. 50.

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  63. Ibid., p. 66. Marcuse quotes a different translation of the same passage in Eros and Civilization, p. 75. The English version is used here from the Hogarth Press edition.

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  64. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, edition cit., p. 69.

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  66. Ibid., p. 118.

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  70. Ibid., pp. 86–7. See also his lecture on ‘The Obsolescence of the Freudian Conception of Man’ (1963), to be found in English in H. Marcuse, Five Lectures, Boston, Mass., 1970.

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  73. For distinction between other-directed and inner-directed, see D. Reisman, The Lonely Crowd, London, 1950.

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  75. Ibid., p. 85.

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  76. Marcuse, ‘The Obsolescence of the Freudian Conception of Man’, in Five Lectures, p. 57.

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  77. Ibid., p. 50.

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  78. Ibid., p. 51.

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  79. Freud, Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning (1911), reference to Collier Books edition, New York, 1963, p. 26.

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  80. Ibid., p. 24.

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  81. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 52.

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  82. Ibid., p. 52.

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  83. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 151.

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  84. Ibid., p. 147.

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  85. Ibid., p. 70.

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  86. Ibid., p. 68.

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  87. Ibid., p. 162.

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  89. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 137.

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  90. Ibid.

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  1. Robert Bocock
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© 1976 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Bocock, R. (1976). Freud and Recent Sociological Theory: the Frankfurt School. In: Freud and Modern Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7364-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7364-1_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-412-38450-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-7364-1

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