Psychoanalytic Social Psychology

Abstract

As developed by Fromm, psychoanalytic social psychology¹ represents a synthesis of the thought of Marx and Freud. In particular, it is the recognition of Marx’s demonstration of our enmeshment in socio- economic conditions and Freud’s demonstration of our enmeshment in psy- chological needs (and the enmeshment of the one with the other). As such, it concerns the adding of an extra dimension to Marxian analysis in the form of the understanding of the human psyche as a determinant of social development alongside external factors, while at the same time grounding the claims of psychoanalysis on a more accurate sociological footing. As Fromm explains in a letter to Adam Schaff (dated March 18, 1965), it was “an attempt to concretize the empirical Marxist statement that it is man’s social existence that determines consciousness. I believe that I can show that Freud’s discovery makes full sense only if one looks at it from the standpoint of Marx, and that Marx’s statement becomes open to empirical study only if one uses the empirical method of studying the unconscious.”