Rieff's Freud and the Tyranny of Psychology

Abstract

When Philip Rieff's magisterial Freud: The Mind of the Moralist was first published in 1959, Freud's status as a scientific authority was at its height. Even within sociology, Freud was considered to be one of the discipline's essential theorists. At such a time, Rieff's text was clearly indispensable for its illuminating accounts of Freud's thought and of its social, moral and political implications. Today, Freud's status as scientist and social theorist has fallen to an all-time low. Nevertheless, his demise has left the value of Rieff's Freud unaffected. In fact, a re-reading of The Mind of the Moralist is a powerful reminder of what makes Freud so central as a cultural figure, and Rieff so essential as a social theorist of the present age. While Rieff highlights those aspects of Freud's thought that remain valuable and sociologically relevant, the real purpose of Rieff's book is to examine its cultural impact. In Rieff's view, Freud's anatomy of the soul and his reductionistic account of the dynamics of culture have proven to be dangerously antinomian and nihilistic in their effects, despite Freud's avowed positions. The `ethic of honesty' espoused by Freud for therapeutic reasons veered dangerously close to a `therapy of barbarism' and to a disenchantment of the inner life that has proven to be more oppressive than liberating. To find a way out from this `tyranny of psychology' became the focus of Rieff's subsequent theoretical work.

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