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On the basis of a common emancipatory interest in enlightenment a co-operation is viewed of psychoanalysis with the other social sciences. Looking for starting-points leading to a critical social psychology in Freud's own writings, the author concludes that the statements Freud made on explicitly sociological issues are obviously bound by the social and scientific prejudices of his time. Freud's clinical argumentation, however, especially after the development of ego-psychology, introduces a true potential of enlightenment into psychoanalysis. The danger of psychologism arising in a co-operation with other social sciences is equally menacing as that of sociologism—social phenomena cannot be reduced to psychology; psychical phenomena cannot be completely reduced to society. A paragraph from Totem and Taboo is subjected to a social-psychologically conceived semantic interpretation of the therapeutical processes of psychoanalysis, in an attempt to show why Freud called the private neuroses of patients social, in contrast to social pathology. The private neurosis excludes—entirely or in part—the diseased person from being a factor in the sociological process of enlightenment insofar as he has withdrawn into a fantasy world of his own. The defence mechanisms of reaction-formation and isolation are taken as instances proving the value of psychoanalytical concepts as concepts of social psychology in which the individual is seen as one moulded by his society.