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Any close reader of social and political commetary in the 1970's must confront the name Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse's impact dates from the publication of his Eros and Civilization , which compounds an earlier Marxist-Hegelian prescription for revolutionary socialism with a new ingredient drawn from the medicine chest of Sigmund Freud—instinctual liberation. Despite the argument that Freud is dead, emanating from those like Hans Eysenck, who proclaims Freudian therapy an absolute failure, and from behaviorist psychologists, who declare the “mind” to be nonexistent, the ideas of Freud remain an essential element of contemporary intellectual history. Whatever insights on Freudian psychoanalysis Marcuse has to offer from his own philosophical outlook should therefore be more than welcome.
The relationship of Marcuse to Freud is important for two additional reasons. First, Marcuse's argument for instinctual liberation is a source of conflict between him and all achievement-oriented critics—whether of socialist or capitalist provenance—who fail to see how their brand of civilization could continue without the element of repression. Secondly, this same argument constitutes Marcuse's strongest appeal to the new young revolutionaries. Thus, both the soundness of Marcuse's political position and the extent of his influence upon those capable of a rational approach to his ideas depend upon the validity of his “Freudian” extrapolation for instinctual liberation.
Basic to Marcuse's thought is his discovery of a new revolutionary dynamic in man's search for instinctual liberation, i.e., for the liberation of Eros. For man to become truly free, Marcuse claims, the rationality of the existing order, which is merely the rationality of