You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In Germany after the lost war in 1918, the great hopes awakened by the revolution were soon followed by deep disappointment. In this mood many young intellectuals looked longingly to the Soviet Union, expecting a solution to the problems of social injustice through the realization of Marxist doctrines. A group of younger psychoanalysts hoped that the addition of psychoanalytic insight to Marxist economics would provide the theoretical foundation for a new society. There were many passionate discussions about how to combine Marx's dialectical materialistic concept of history with psychoanalytic knowledge of the human psyche. With no thorough understanding of economics, these young analysts accepted Marx's theories and predictions unquestioningly.
In Germany today the same strong currents are appearing again. After the downfall of the Third Reich and the partition of the country, many people had one aim: to try to forget what had happened by striving only for tangible goods—for money, cars, television, etc. No ideas, no ideals, no promises had proved valid; all had failed. But even the Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle, did not make people happy, and now the intellectuals, succeeding the religious leaders of former times, are searching for new ideals, perhaps for new utopias.
This important book is a sign of this search. The author is a brilliant scholar and thinker who has a profound knowledge of philosophy, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. A teacher of sociology and the editor of the excellent German psychoanalytic monthly, Psyche, Dahmer is one of the younger men whose studies have been influenced by Professor Mitscherlich and the Sigmund Freud Institute and by Horkheimer and his pupils of the former Institut für Sozialforschung, both in Frankfurt. Dahmer's book deserves a thorough critical appraisal. But to do full justice to it, one needs not only a knowledge of psychoanalysis, but expertise in the works of Marx, the later works of Marxist scholars, a