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Sigmund Freud rightly anticipated that his theories would challenge our acquiescence to repressive social norms. He never forgot the outrage at his 1896 lecture to the Vienna Neurological Society. Under Richard Krafft-Ebing's presidency,
the void which formed itself around me... the hints that were conveyed to me, made me realize that assertions on the role of sexuality... cannot count upon meeting with the same kind of treatment as other communications. I understood that from now on I was one of those who have disturbed the sleep of the world… and that I could not reckon upon tolerance. (Freud, 1914/1957b)
Two decades and one world war later, having shaken our status quo, Freud called upon “the conscience of society [to] awake” (Freud, 1918/1955).
Eli Zaretsky's new book shows us just how the conscience of society woke up. A professor of history at the New School for Social Research and investigative social critic, Zaretsky has applied psychoanalysis on its own terms to explore and explain how the tensions within the 20th
century's most powerful movements—capitalism, racism, anti-Semitism, consumerism, and feminism—defied tradition, changed society, and led to great awakenings. Using the Freudian framework is political, first because Freud's work was built around a core of progressive beliefs closely allied to Viennese Social Democracy between 1918 and 1933. Second, it is political because the Freudian system is inherently a catalyst for change, forward movement, liberation from repression, and awakening. This potential for transformation, and its corollary refutation of authoritarianism, motivated most of the first- and second-generation psychoanalysts to hold left-wing political affiliations in their native countries. Among the declared Marxists were Erich Fromm and Otto Fenichel; Helene Deutsch and Siegfried Bernfeld identified themselves as socialists. Edith Jacobson and Wilhelm Reich were Communists. Karen Horney, Clara Happel, and Sigmund Freud were Social