Inside the Leviathan

The Politics of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction to Freudian and Post-Freudian Theory by Stephen Frosh.  Macmillan Education, 1987.  290 pages, £6.95 pb

At its birth, psychoanalysis was a theory of repressed sexuality. It was also a critique of sexual repression in an age of sexual repression. One could say with Rousseau, ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’ (Rousseau, 1762, 1974, p. 5). The emancipatory implications of psychoanalysis seemed clear. One could even go beyond liberal conceptions of freedom. Sexual liberation could be seen as complementary to the Marxist aim of liberation from economic exploitation. Psychoanalysis gave added meaning to the idea of an association in which the ‘free development of each [individual] is the condition for the free development of all’ (Tucker, 1978, p. 491). But after Freud's introduction of the Todestrieb (the death-drive) in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) the political picture darkened. Man now appeared as a wolf to man — or to himself. Tormented by the pressure of destructive impulses, the individual had virtually no choice but self-destruction or the destruction of others. Was it possible any longer to argue against Thomas Hobbes's depiction of the natural human condition in Leviathan (1651, 1962)

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time,

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wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; A