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DAVID RAPAPORT ENDED HIS book The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory (1960) with the following statement:
We may not be too far off the mark in suggesting that the malaise of psychology which is manifested in the 'measuring rage' is also responsible for the epidemiclike popularity in psychology of 'information theory, ' 'open systems, ' 'stress syndrome, ' and other imported conceptions. Concepts and methods can be borrowed from other sciences: all that is useful should be used. But grasping at every likely new achievement of other sciences is a giveaway: salvation is expected from the outside and not from results achieved by the sweat of our own brows. At the root of it is a lack of self-confidence: the lack of assurance that psychology knows where it has come from and where it is going.
Alfred Lorenzer did not avoid the sweat of his own brow. He seems to me to be one of the few authors in the field of psychoanalysis who surprises us with fascinating reformulations, insights, and concepts which he develops and explains with the self-confidence of a psychoanalyst who is simultaneously a social scientist.
The task of reviewing his concepts from one book (1973a) is formidable enough, due to the richness of its ideas. In addition, the work of Lorenzer is so intertwined that I must consider other books and publications of his. However, in this paper, I regretfully refrain from discussing the development of his theory of socialization in the broader framework of historical materialism. I shall focus on two topics which seem especially interesting to modern psychoanalysis, not only from a theoretical but especially from a