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I was stunned by Eli Zaretsky's Political Freud , a fascinating creative treatise on Sigmund Freud's complex and profound political influence on human culture, economics, radical leftist movements, and lifestyle in America and the world. The book reads like a sweeping historical drama beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and moves us through major Kuhnian shifts in psycho-cultural paradigms as it illuminates Freud's seminal impact in an articulate, intelligent style. While reflecting a broad knowledge of psychoanalysis, history, anthropology, sociology, and economics, Political Freud appears to be the culmination of Zaretsky's previous thinking in such works as Secrets of the Soul , and “Why the Freudian Century: Reflections on the Statue of Athena” (2011). This book is always provocative and stimulating, although I disagreed with some premises and conclusions.
Most intriguing was its tragic Promethean psycho-political arc, and how Freud's psychoanalytic brilliance (e.g., his discovery of the deep, pervasive influence of unconscious motivation, his psychosexual developmental theory with its phallocentric Oedipal foundation, and the importance of personal self-reflection, abreaction, and the intrapsychic exploration of an individual's mind) contained the seeds of its own destruction. Thus, he describes how Freudianism's abreactive emphasis, unlifting repressions of the id, inadvertently paved the way for the impulsivity of the late 1960s and 70s, leading to the reign of narcissism, which continues today in the form of Trumpism.
Broadly speaking, Political Freud is about the struggle of the individual to free himself from the oppressive influence of empowered others, as represented by family, church, business, government, and cultural mores. It is about Zaretsky's love for the enlightenment tradition of reason and science in its endless fight to overcome religious superstition, puritanical ethics, and authoritarianism. But its most significant theme is how cla