must have a common foundation. But Freudian theory suffers even more distortions in this process. I will not even mention how Zalkind (1924) mechanically deprives it of its central idea. In his article it is passed over in silence, which is also noteworthy. But take the monism of psychoanalysis—Freud would contest it. The article mentions that he turned to philosophical monism, but where, in which words, in connection with what? Is finding empirical unity in some group of facts really always monism? On the contrary, Freud always accepted the mental, the unconscious as a special force which cannot be reduced to something else. Further, why is this monism materialistic in the philosophical sense? After all, medical materialism which acknowledges the influence of different organs etc. upon mental structures is still very far from philosophical materialism. In the philosophy of Marxism this concept has a specific, primarily epistemological sense and it is precisely in his epistemology that Freud stands on idealist philosophical grounds. For it is a fact, which is not refuted and not even considered by the authors of the “coincidences,” that Freud’s doctrine of the primary role of blind drives, of the unconscious as being reflected in consciousness in a distorted fashion, goes back directly to Schopenhauer’s’3 idealistic metaphysics of the will and the idea. Freud [1920/1973, pp. 49-50] himself remarks that in his extreme conclusions he is in the harbor of Schopenhauer. [18] But his basic assumptions as well as the main lines of his system are connected with the philosophy of the great pessimist, as even the simplest analysis can demonstrate.

In its more “concrete” works as well, psychoanalysis displays not dynamic, but highly static, conservative, anti-dialectic and anti-historical tendencies. It directly reduces the higher mental processes—both personal and collective ones—to primitive, primordial, essentially prehistorical, prehuman roots, leaving no room for history. The same key unlocks the creativity of a Dostoyevsky and the totem and taboo of primordial tribes; the Christian church, communism, the primitive horde—in psychoanalysis everything is reduced to the same source. That such tendencies are present in psychoanalysis is apparent from all the works of this school which deal with problems of culture, sociology and history. We can see that here it does not continue, but contradicts, the methodology of Marxism. But about this one keeps silent as well.

Finally, the third point. Freud’s whole psychological system of fundamental concepts goes back to Lipps [1903]: the concepts of the unconscious, of the mental energy connected with certain ideas, of drives as the basis of the mind, of the struggle between drives and repression, of the affective nature of consciousness, etc. In other words, Freud’s psychological roots lead back to the spiritualistic strata of Lipps’ psychology. How is it possible to disregard this when speaking about Freud’s methodology?

Thus, we see where Freud and his system have come from and where they are heading for: from Schopenhauer and Lipps to Kolnay and mass psychology.’4 But to apply the system of psychoanalysis while saying nothing about metapsychology, social psychology [19] and Freud’s theory of sexuality is to give it a quite arbitrary interpretation. As a result, a person not knowing Freud would get an utterly false idea of him from such an exposition of his system. Freud himself would protest against the word “system” first of all. In his opinion, one of the greatest merits of psychoanalysis and its author is that it consciously avoids becoming a system. [20] Freud himself rejects the “monism” of psychoanalysis [21]: he does not demand that the factors he discovered be accepted as exclusive or primary. He does not at all attempt to “give an exhaustive theory of the mental life of man,” but demands only that his statements be used to complete and correct the knowledge which we have acquired through whatever other way. [22] In another place he says that psy