Liberatory Psychiatry

Introduction: Freud, Marx and progressive psychoanalytic theory

Throughout the twentieth century, Leftist psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically inclined Marxists have tried to achieve some sort of a synthesis between psychoanalysis and Marxism. Thus, through the years the confusing term of “Freudo-Marxism” has popped up periodically. The reality is that no authors ever recognized themselves as a participant in a Freudo-Marxist current. As Alejandro Vainer put it, “Freudo-Marxism never existed.”

In Latin America, when someone is accused of being a Freudo-Marxist, he or she is seen as somebody who is theoretically sloppy; who establishes a cross of little theoretical and clinical consistency between Marxism and psychoanalysis. Supposedly, in that mélange, patients get poorly psychoanalyzed and badly politicized. From that point of view, a Freudo-Marxist is somebody that you would not want to introduce as your associate to your colleagues in the intellectual and scientific fields. Freudo-Marxist is a name that was utilized to disqualify Marxist psychoanalysts.

Leon Rozitchner is a philosopher who has contributed brilliant insights to the problem of articulating psychoanalysis and Marxism. In his classic work, Freud and the Problem of Power, Rozitchner analyzes the internalization of power in the formation of subjectivity according to Freud and Marx: