Amy Allen, Critique on the Couch: Why Critical Theory Needs Psychoanalysis (New York:  Colombia University Press, Series: New Directions in Critical Theory, 2021;  265pp.)

Why does contemporary critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition need psychoanalysis, Amy Allen asks in her carefully argued and illuminating new work, Critique on the Couch. More particularly, if it does have such a need, what does it need it for; what kind of work can psychoanalysis do for critical theory in its attempt to understand and address the various political crises of the current historical moment? Allen's overall direction - and it is an innovative one - is to introduce Kleinian metapsychology to a history of critical theory that has either drawn on a late Freudian metapsychology with its antagonism between drives towards life and death, or a Winnicottian turn that eviscerates some of what is so useful in Freud's understanding of the centrality of destructiveness in psychic life. The question Allen poses is whether a new pairing between critical theory and Kleinian psychoanalysis can provide some handle on the ‘deep irrationality’, as she puts it, of the contemporary political moment (p. 187). She briefly alludes to this as the resurgence and continued allure of right-wing authoritarian populist movements that paradoxically work against the interests of those who support them, and the breakdown and fragmentation of political processes that can provide coherent resistance to such movements. Allen's wager is that Klein's unique conception of both aggression and reparation can provide a resource for understanding such ‘deep irrationality’ in the political system, and even offer a solution in the form of a more ‘depressive’ politics. The turn to Klein also aims to sidestep both some of the pitfalls within Freudian theory (with its implicit ideas of development and progress and its explicit Eurocentric, racist and colonial underpinnings) as well as the limitations of an object relations tradition, which situates aggression as a response to environmental failure. Allen therefore seeks to