THE END OF PSYCHOANALYSIS (1939)

Georges Politzer

The death ofSigmund Freudreplaces before our mind the psychoanalysis which, in fact,
belongs already to the past.

Interest in the designs and methods associated with the name of Freud has not ceased to
decrease, especially over the last ten years. It has even disappeared in some circles.
truly advanced scientists.

The history of psychoanalysis reveals, indeed, three periods: a period of development,

a period of great controversies and growing prestige, finally the period of integration
in official science and scholastic decadence.

During the decade that followed Freud's work after his break with
Breuer, the little-known psychoanalysis, is opposed by its representatives.
university psychiatry. The discussions are becoming more and more heated as
"Freudianism" is spreading not only among doctors but also among writers.
and the 'cultivated public'. During the years that followed the war, the prestige of the
psychoanalysis is at its peak. Then the passionate discussions cease; the
"resistance" of classical psychiatrists falls; psychoanalysis integrates in turn
in official science, however, among its 'authentic' representatives, it
takes on the appearance of a true scholasticism: libido, complex, superego, etc. become
so many clichés, and the psychoanalytic works go around in circles ruminating
constantly the same themes.

Yes, during the ten years preceding the war of 1914-1918, psychoanalysis was
already quite famous in the Central European countries and fairly well known in the circles
Anglo-Saxon scientists, it was almost completely ignored in France.
The refutation attempted by Yves Delage of the Freudian theory of dreams is an attempt
quite isolated.

The diffusion of psychoanalysis in France began in the aftermath of the war. This
first of all, there too, from the representatives of official science, some
sharp controversies, through arguments that were not always scientific. The
Charles Blondel, then a professor at the University of Strasbourg, regretted not writing, didn't he?
in a pamphlet intended to refute psychoanalysis, that the ideas and practices that it
characterized, could well suit the Germanic spirit, but were not
compatible with Latin genius?

However, the spread of psychoanalysis has continued in France as well, and today,
it also coexists in this country with classical methods and theories that,
according to her supporters, she was meant to eliminate. The changes that occurred in the
The destinies of psychoanalysis were noted by Freud himself.

1. La Pensée, number 3, October-November-December 1939, pp. 13-23; signed by

pseudonym of Th. W. Morris.
He reported in 1932 that psychoanalysis is 'considered a science'; that it
has "conquered its place at the University"; that if "the battles fought around it are not
not yet finished", "it continues with less harshness" (News
Conferences on psychoanalysis, p. 189.

Nothing indicates that the right of citizenship was granted to psychoanalysis because of its contributions.
really positive things that could be credited to his/her account, particularly in psychiatry.

Without wanting to insist in this study on a detailed discussion of psychoanalysis in

As a therapy, it can be noted that it is now certain that Freud's method
has not justified the great hopes she has raised.

Many doctors claim in clinics to practice psychoanalysis. But they

they practice, in fact, an eclectic method in the vast majority of cases, and it does not
can be established in a truly scientific manner that the practical results obtained
by the specifically Freudian processes represent an actual progress of our
ways to act on mental illnesses.

The results obtained are not superior to those that can be obtained by others!
methods, referred to as psychological medication, and on the other hand, there still remains a
doubt about the nature of the process by which the result was actually achieved. It is moreover
characteristic that in his latest works Freud declared, speaking of the effectiveness of
psychoanalysis was, compared to other methods, merely prima inter pares.

The fact is that our means of action in psychiatry remain, after psychoanalysis, also
less than before. The problem in this area goes beyond very
presumably the frameworks of both psychological medications and
physiological factors taken separately, rather than methods that merely combine them,
abstracting from the objective historical conditions in which it
develop the psychopathic man as a social phenomenon, and the necessity of a
action on these conditions themselves.

We will not elaborate further on another aspect of psychoanalysis that appeared,

he too, first of all sensational, namely his educational applications.

It is also clear today that the hopes placed in psychoanalysis

were entirely unjustified.

The so-called proof by "results" that they propose, with their imprecision
habitual, the psychoanalysts, is without significance.

As in psychotherapy, the processes actually applied by the

Psychoanalysts in pedagogy are of two kinds.

There are processes that are beneficial, but which have nothing specifically Freudian.
These are processes that react against the element of barbarism that our...
traditional education system. Thus, the condemnation of the method that
consists in wanting to resolve through violence the problems posed by the formation of
the child's character has nothing specifically psychoanalytical.
As for the specifically psychoanalytic processes, they are, at best,
ineffective. They are, more precisely, harmful to the extent that it involves
processes that focus education on attention to sexual conflicts. There is a
physical and social reality whose life is in no way determined by mechanisms
familiar to psychoanalysts. The reality in which girls and must live
boys pose them problems in other terms, objectives that those of which they are made
the complexes of Ariadne and Oedipus.

Consider that the liquidation of these complexes or the resolution of the conflicts that they
constituent, forms the essential task, or one of the essential tasks of education,
it distorts in the child 'the attention to life' to use the expression of a famous person
philosopher. As a method thus oriented, psychoanalytic pedagogy draws inspiration from
obviously from the position of those for whom the objective, economic problems and
others, are resolved, and for whom the world seems indeed to revolve around the
sexual conflicts.

There certainly exist social environments where there is a material basis for such
abstraction, and in this sense, psychoanalysis contains a part of truth, but the great
masses, for example, are faced with concerns of an objectivity
more decisive than the relationships between the Ich and the Es. This is undoubtedly the reason,
for which there were some attempts to complete the psychoanalytic pedagogy
individual through a social pedagogy designed according to the same principles.

Ultimately, psychoanalysis is more interesting as a historical fact than as

what scientific movement, and it is more informative through the social facts of which it
contains reflections only through the content of the theories by means of which it wanted
to instruct us. However, if psychoanalysis has lost most of its prestige, if,
even from a literary point of view, libido themes and complex characters are
without yield, it is still the purely theoretical content of the movement stemming from
Freud, who relatively evokes the most illusion. In our opinion, it is not useless to
let us elaborate further on this aspect of the problem. The theoretical context of the
Psychoanalysis is one of a very eclectic eclecticism.

The reproach of eclecticism directed at Freud may be surprising, since it is about dogmatism.
especially since he was accused by his dissenting disciples, and the fact is that he went as far as
to assert that psychoanalysis, as he used to conceive it, constituted One
everything from which no essential part should be removed. But dogmatism and eclecticism
do not exclude each other at all. The history of ideas provides constant proof of this. Victor
Cousin, head of the Eclectic School, was he not dogmatic enough to want to impose
an official philosophy at the University?

It is that dogmatism does not express the firmness of the thinker who accepts no other rule.
that the conformity of ideas to facts. It expresses the determination to maintain a
ideological scaffolding, where applicable, against the facts. Representatives of all
inconsistent and incoherent systems are dogmatic, and they are the ones who need
of being. A truly deep thought, having no other ambition than to grasp
close to reality, adapts quite naturally to new facts and new situations.
For the scholar and the authentic thinker, the new fact, the new discovery are
always happy events, while the false scholar and the thinker who lives on
ill-conceived ideas rise up with even more fury against innovators than they do against others.
are more disturbed by them in their eclectic tranquility. Freud was dogmatic and
eclectic, and its eclecticism was decisive for the destinies of psychoanalysis.

If we examine Freud's early theoretical concepts, we find very

clearly the influence of a mechanical materialism, the very one that was so widespread
among the doctors of the last century and popularized by philosophical representatives
of vulgar materialism, such as Moleschott and Buchner. It is this materialism
mechanist who appears in Freud when, for example, in the Three Essays on the
sexuality, he suggests bringing the attraction of one sex to the other down to a physical action.
Chemical. It is he who appears in models especially through which Freud has
tried to account for his observations. The fundamental theoretical concepts
by the author of the Interpretation of Dreams are indeed dominated by these mechanical models.

Generally speaking, the ideal of scientific explanation consists, according to Freud, in

represent mental processes through a game of forces constructed on the model of
physical forces. Hence the notion of 'complex', which is defined as the action of a
force on a representation; hence the notion of "libido" with the continuous use of
the concept of energy handled according to a purely physical schematism.

This mindset is found even in Freud's latest works.

Nevertheless, Freud wanted to react against certain theories marked by the seal of
mechanistic materialism.

In the introduction to the Interpretation of Dreams, he examines and dismisses purely

physiological aspects of the dream. He specifically emphasizes the idea that it is not possible
to explain dreams solely through physiological processes, because dreaming also has a
content. As we know, Freud wanted to dedicate his main effort in this area to
the explanation of the content of the dream. He wanted to explain why a determined individual has
I precisely had a determined dream and he adopted a similar attitude in front of the
neuroses and psychoses, trying to explain the content of the symptoms.

There, Freud had approached a field of paramount importance that theories

inspired by mechanistic materialism were precisely unable to address a
useful way.

Indeed, as soon as it comes to the explanation of what we are used to calling life
mental, we find ourselves faced with the necessity to make a distinction that is
fundamental: that between the act of producing 'ideas' and the content of
"ideas" produced. The fact of the production of ideas pertains to the brain, but the ideas
productions have a 'content' that cannot be explained either without the brain or by the brain.
It is true that the brain is a necessary condition here, but not a sufficient condition. If,
To think about the idea of freedom, one must have a brain, the different way in which the
different social classes understand freedom cannot be explained clearly by
differences in brain structure. The fact is established by a classic argument: there is no
no parallelism between the evolution of ideas on one hand and the revolution of the brain
On the other hand. But this does not mean that there is reason to give up the search for a
effective reality that can serve as a material substrate for the history of ideas. This
means that this reality must be sought elsewhere than in the brain.
This is what mechanistic materialism is incapable of doing. It remains confined in
the limits of purely physiological explanations and knows no others
material explanations. Unable to explain the concrete content of "life"
mental", he loses interest in it and falls into abstraction or, rather, he finds it again
idealism.

This one does not concern itself with the precise content of mental life either. Because the
"Ideas" cannot be reduced to the brain, because one cannot "deduce" the "ideas".
of the 'brain', it elevates ideas into independent realities, builds a world apart and
shows disinterest in the concrete man. Mechanistic materialism and idealism cannot
to get rid of each other: mechanistic materialism has a certain background
of idealism and spiritualist doctrines; they create representations of the mind that are
always the more or less refined copies of the material.

Freud criticized the psychological and psychopathological theories inspired by

mechanistic materialism disinterested in the content of mental life. We
we will set aside the question of whether the very terms in which he posed the
problems are correct; if, for example, the problem is to search for the meaning of
each dream and each neurotic symptom. The essential thing is that if materialism
mechanist and idealism - the so-called physiological theories and the theories of the
classic introspective psychology - sins by abstraction, this could not be
overcome only by freeing itself from both mechanistic materialism and idealism. Without
this, by reacting against mechanistic materialism, leads us back to idealism. And
that's what happened to Freud.

I was led to emphasize with great insistence the impotence of purely

physiological in psychology and psychiatry, Freud opposed the explanations
psychoanalytical to physiological explanations. He denied, regarding life
mental, a falsely conceived material genesis, but unable to indicate another
conception, correct, of its material genesis. That is why one of the results of
the combats led by Freud against mechanistic theories was that his theory could be cited
supporting the doctrine that thought cannot be explained by the brain. From
Thus, psychoanalysis has entered the sphere of attraction of the philosophical reaction.
from the end of the 19th century to then increasingly suffer from its harmful influence.

The biological aspects of Freud are often invoked against the assertion that the
Psychoanalysis is of an idealistic orientation.

It is noted that one of the most fundamental aspects, or even the most fundamental aspect
fundamental to Freud's doctrine is the emphasis on the determining role of
instincts that are of biological, therefore material, origin. However, a conception that
would explain all mental life either through the play of instincts or through one instinct
predominant, would still only move within the narrow confines of a materialism
mechanic. And it is precisely such an orientation that is one of the aspects of the
Freudian theory of instincts and libido in particular. It is conceived, indeed
from the beginning according to an energy model. The notion of libido was initially patterned after
directly on the notion of physical energy. It is characteristic, at the same time, that
Freud could not adhere to this point of view in a consistent manner either.
But such a theory, precisely because it falls under mechanistic materialism,
find idealism in all historical questions, for idealism in the
the domain of history is precisely, according to Engels' expression, one of the 'narrownesses
specific

If instincts are of organic, that is to say material, origin, it does not result at all
that any explanation by means of instincts be materialistic, in the scientific sense of the term
term. Indeed, instincts have their direct organic sources in the individual body, and
an explanation of historical facts through instincts practically brings us back to
an explanation of history by individual psychology, not to grant it
as a legitimate part, but to make it a determining factor. However, we know that the machinery
The term 'complexes' was also used by Freud for the explanation.
social facts, historical facts. One of the theoretical merits of psychoanalysis
would be precisely, according to Freud and his disciples, to have 'revolutionized' the sciences
social issues. In this way, psychoanalysis has been led to stand against the
historical materialism. She initially stood against it in a way
"unconscious". It was the consequence of his confusionism.

But by that, she has again found a reactionary ideological current and therefore
this aspect of psychoanalysis was systematically developed: the "sociology
Psychoanalytic was set against Marxist sociology.

It is enough to skim through any psychoanalytical work to realize that

What trivialities can result from "Freudian sociology."

Let's only point out that in fact Freud and his disciples were led to propose the
"complexes" instead of the real driving forces of history.

The 'sociology' they arrived at thus brings to the surface idealism.

that the doctrine contains at its base.

Through this aspect of psychoanalytic theories, the movement stemming from Freud has joined, by
beyond the philosophical reaction, the social and political reaction. Freud introduced as
we know, in his dream theory, the distinction between the 'manifest content' and the
"latent content". The interpretation method involves extracting, in light of the
materials provided by the subject, the latent content of the manifest content. This reduction
is presented as a penetration into the depths of the subject's soul and it is to
because of this process that psychoanalysis is considered a 'psychology'
abyssal

This distinction between manifest content and latent content was subsequently generalized.
by Freud, and applied not only to the interpretation of neurotic symptoms,
but also to sociological and historical subjects. And it is also how she was
applied to the history of ideas.

But here, the psychoanalyst is unable to grasp how the initially fantastic reflection
The real world in human consciousness becomes an increasingly faithful reflection.
more: it searches in ideas not for the reflection of the real world, but for the reflection of complexes
who are designed, in fact, outside of history. It is also how psychoanalysts
They were brought to link social movements to 'complexes'. Naturally,
a theory claiming to represent the real is illusory in the very measure that it
reveals a psychological symbolism. In attempting to apply the 'method
"psychoanalytic" against social movements, Freud's disciples have forged.
their explanation by real historical causes, fanciful explanations by
imaginary causes. But this aspect of their theory was and is particularly appreciated by
all those who want to 'refute' a scientific sociology and fight the movement
social who feeds on it. There lies the reason for the success achieved by certain circles in all kinds of
"Psychoanalyses" of Marxism or socialism. Here, the inconsistency that is at the foundation of
Psychoanalysis can be grasped in all its anti-scientific triviality.

In what we are accustomed to calling psychology, we encounter without

by studying the "higher mental functions", the problem of the relationships between
the individual and the reality that acts on him and on which he acts. Never Freud and his disciples
have not reached a clear understanding of the relationships between the individual and the law
individual psychological and historical law.

When studying a social movement, one must certainly be concerned about the role of
individuals, since in the final analysis history is made by acting individuals. But
explain why a determined individual can play a determined role, explain theirs
selection with a view to fulfilling this role, is a problem that must not be
confused with the explanation of the movement itself.

Even such a distinction would be insufficient in this form. The role that an individual
is brought to play can be explained in its concrete historical characteristics by
the individual only. It is a role generated by historical development, and what
depends on the individual, it is the choice that their 'psychology' will make among the possibilities
historically data from an era. This 'psychology' cannot be, either,
separated from the concrete history of humanity.

The 'psychological mechanisms' select some for the role of hero and the
others for the role of cowards, but these 'mechanisms' also have their historical genesis
and their social living conditions.

Freud and his disciples base not only individual actions on

their most strictly individual aspects, but still at the base of movements
social some mechanisms of individual psychology.

Assuming that fundamental complexes like the 'Oedipus complex' and the
"Ariadne's complex" actually exists, with the characteristics and proportions that
they give the psychoanalysts, these are 'mechanisms' that could do everything up to
Additionally, explain an individual's inclination towards such a type of action with their characteristics.
concrete histories. Thus attempts have not been lacking to apply the method
psychoanalytic explanation of Nazism.

Nazi bestiality with the frequency of erotic themes seems to invite very
especially to this kind of explanation. However, if it can be explained with some difficulty.
Why does Nazi X rather than Nazi Y accept to play the role of torturer in a
concentration camp, that does not explain Nazism as a phenomenon
history
Freud transformed the initial confusion he had between psychology and
the history, in dogmatic thesis and he imagined that his "complexes" provide
also the key to history.

The "applications of psychoanalysis to the social sciences" cannot be attempted.

without leading to a double abstraction. The famous "complexes" are not - in the
measure where they are — just very general patterns. Their generality has a basis in the
that we find, of course, throughout the history of humanity, for example, the
sexual intercourse between man and woman. However, it is still only found there.
in specific historical situations: determined societies that have their mode of
production, and all their complex superstructure. Society, in all its complexity,
enters into the very fabric of the sexual relationship. In wanting to explain social facts by
of "complexes", Freud was led, in fact, to use some general formulas
master key and to neglect the concrete man in his historical reality. Sociology
Psychoanalytic is, for this reason, only the reissue, in a different vocabulary,
from the old idealist sociology.

A second aspect of the idealistic abstraction of Freudianism appears when considering the
the way Freud and his disciples conceive the relationship between objective reality and the
products of the human mind. We will set aside the philosophical confessions of
Freud, from whom we can easily draw arguments to prove how far he has fallen.
under idealistic influence. We prefer to consider what actually appears in
the properly psychoanalytic concepts.

It is known that after attempting to interpret dreams and neurotic symptoms, Freud
attempted to interpret not only the myths but also the
literary works, even philosophical and even scientific. The method consists not
only to reconstruct a 'latent' content where we find the 'complexes'
fundamentals of psychoanalysis, but still to be attributed to the intervention of these
complexes play a determining role in the formation of the myth for example. When Freud
cite the interpretation according to which the myth of the Labyrinth symbolizes an anal birth
where the thread of Ariadne represents the umbilical cord — he thinks it is the essence of
the explanation that was thus provided.

In this way, the reflection of the outside world in human consciousness disappears and
we return again to a monstrous abstraction: the human mind works primarily on
the development of symbols based on one's "complexes." It is once again idealism.
which is transposed into psychoanalytic language: to the "physiological idealism" of
glorious memory comes to join "psychoanalytic idealism", "energy"
specific of the sensory nerves" of Muller being replaced by the "libido" of
Freud.

There are numerous allusions in Freud and his disciples to the influence of society on
the individual. Does not the Oedipus complex imply a social experience, that of the
family? One could therefore think that psychoanalysts should delve deeper into this.
aspect of the question. In reality, they did not delve into it.

They have, moreover, no means for that. Such work is contrary to inspiration.
psychoanalysis. Following this path leads to the discovery of character
eminently historical of complexes and, consequently, the understanding of inadequacy
purely psychological methods for the explanation of history. However, the
psyschotherapy seeks to explain history through psychology rather than psychology through
history. Thus, it necessarily falls into the metaphysical conception of
the man. It is all the more singular that some could find a conception in it.
dialectic.

Moreover, any detailed study can only confirm these observations regarding
the idealistic orientation of psychoanalysis. This idealism can still be highlighted
in another way.

Idealism, as it developed from the end of the 16th century, has been, as it
became increasingly tinted with irrationalism. Psychoanalysis was to provide
foods also to this movement.

It is known, indeed, that psychoanalysis was proclaimed 'abyssal psychology.'

mainly because of his "revelations" concerning "the unconscious".

When one wants to give a great compliment to a theorist, one readily says that he has
made a Copernican revolution. Freud's disciples did not fail to address it
assigning one to the master of Vienna. The Copernican revolution would have consisted, here, in
the fact that Freud would have substituted a psychology revolving around consciousness with a
psychology revolving around the unconscious.

The essential theoretical conclusion of the Interpretation of Dreams is indeed that

the unconscious, which was nothing, seems to be everything, and vice versa.

Such a statement was completely in line with the irrationalist theses to which
she seemed to bring new arguments of great precision. Here again, the
Psychoanalysts have encountered a reactionary ideological current.
The irrational, the unconscious are therefore the law of the life of the soul.

The transition from the theoretical point of view to the normative point of view was accomplished easily:
since in fact mental life is based on the dynamic unconscious, why struggle
against the unconscious instead of diving into it? Thus, psychoanalysis that has emerged
First of all, as giving sacred mystics profane explanations and that we have
even accused of being desecrators — ended up supporting mysticism in all its
forms. The multiple contacts established between religion and psychoanalysis, the frequency
psychoanalytic themes among obscurantists of all kinds, including the
Nazis, prove it sufficiently.

Psychoanalysis seemed to conquer the world. In fact, it was the one that was tossed around.
from influence to influence and carried into the most ideological currents
reactionaries.

All this said, one could simply state that those who tried to present
psychoanalysis as the missing complement to dialectical materialism
to be completely modern, neither knows the other, nor psychoanalysis, nor
dialectical materialism.
However, it should be noted that attempts of this kind are very characteristic and
they also draw attention to the social nature of Freudianism. Indeed, the
discussions on the synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis have developed in
the revisionist environments; by its ability to serve as a cover for revisionism at a
At the given moment, psychoanalysis has indeed revealed its deep ties with all the
sources from which revisionism draws.

It is however true that much has been praised about the revolutionary nature of the
psychoanalysis. The main argument put forward was to say that psychoanalysis
dared, finally, to assign the true place to sexual instinct, to libido, to eroticism. Some
authors have not hesitated to establish a parallel between psychoanalysis and
scientific sociology. Scientific sociology has understood the true place of
proletariat in society; psychoanalysis has understood the true place of sexuality. The
scientific sociology has created the theoretical foundations for the elimination of exploitation
of man by man. Psychoanalysis has broken the chains of sexual instinct,
doctrine of liberation in both cases.

It is not useful to insist on the absurdity of putting in parallel the

proletariat, that is to say a social class, and the sexual instinct, that is to say in the
best case a biological concept. But it is useful to note that the claims of
this type bears the mark of an orientation that notoriously has nothing to do with the
scientific socialism.

The great utopian Fourier had provided brilliant analyses of hypocrisy, of what he has
called bourgeois morality and primarily its works also contain on the
"sexual problem" of bright glimpses. But for him, the corruption of morals,
hypocrisy, etc., characterize what he calls the age of 'civilization', that is to say
the historical step that capitalism represents, and he understood very well that life
healthy sexuality is, on a social scale, a function of the organization of society, that it is the
solution to the "sexual problem" which depends on the solution of the social problem and not the
solution to the social problem of the solution to the "sexual problem", like the
Psychoanalysts tend to believe it.

But this trend, precisely, reveals the characteristic abstraction of the environments of the
petite bourgeoisie

The observation of facts fully confirms this viewpoint. It is not, in

In fact, the popular masses who provided the social foundations for psychoanalysis.

What could have created many illusions in this field is the fact that, especially in its
From its beginnings, psychoanalysis found violent opponents in conservative circles.

This reaction from conservative circles was particularly related to the conceptions
Religious. But there are, in this regard, two facts to consider.

On one hand, placing at the center of concerns the struggle for the 'recognition of the right
"sexual" is a characteristic attitude of certain segments of the petty bourgeoisie;
on the other hand, even from this point of view, the situation of psychoanalysis has evolved; as
we have already said it, official contacts have been established between religion and the
psychoanalysis.
It is true that the exile of Freud has often been mentioned in psychoanalytic circles.
symbolizing the condemnation of psychoanalysis by the Nazis. Certainly, there were some
Nazi declamations against psychoanalysis. It is nonetheless true that the
Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts provided quite a few themes to the Nazi theorists,
first of all that of the unconscious. The practical attitude of Nazism towards the
Psychoanalysis was primarily determined by tactical reasons.

In taking on the appearance of iconoclasts, psychoanalysts have deeply offended the

sentiments of the masses of the middle classes. Such is the historical specialty of
petty-bourgeois anarchism. In addition to the racial question, it is to exploit this fact.
that Nazism somewhat denounced Freudianism, but that never stopped it, nor
to integrate psychoanalysts among the Nazi staff, nor to borrow themes from the
Freudian doctrine.

Furthermore, precisely because the psychoanalytic exaggerations clashed with the

sentiments of certain social layers, and also because there were many fervent
from psychoanalysis among avant-garde intellectuals, the social democrats in
In particular, Nazi propagandists exploited resentment against psychoanalysis.
to further discredit the relevant circles. It is for the same reasons that
Hitler attacks decadent art, etc. in Mein Kampf.

We have tried to show that the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis are

characterized by a confused eclecticism. Under these conditions, Freud was poorly equipped, in
literal meaning of the word, to correctly analyze new or relatively new facts
new ones that he could report. And, indeed, the more psychoanalysis has developed,
the more she fell under the influence of retrograde ideological currents. However,
It is a fact that classical psychology barely talked about sexuality, that it has
disinterested in the concrete individual and his concrete historical environment, his environment
vital. It is also a fact that psychoanalysis has attracted with particular insistence
the attention on these "taboo" subjects. But talking about "forbidden" subjects is not a title.
sufficient in terms of science, and it clearly appears today that psychoanalysis does not
hardly does more: it has not brought any new clarity to the problems that
present the facts she has dealt with.

The facts that psychoanalysis has touched upon must be revisited in order to be understood.
correctly. Psychoanalysis itself owes its success not to new means
that it provided us to understand an aspect of reality and to act upon it, but at its
relevance to the concerns and situation of certain social environments. It has been
a fashion in the literal sense of the word; its rise can also be explained by the conditions that
we experienced during the years that followed the war of 1914-1918.

It is likely today that psychoanalysis will suffer a fate similar to that of

phrenology and hypnotism. Like them, it belongs to the past.

The path of real discoveries and the effective science of man does not go through
the sensational 'shortcuts' of psychoanalysis. It goes through the precise study of
physiological and historical facts, in light of this conception of which the whole
modern natural sciences guarantee solidity.