The Crisis in Psychology

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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 note-

worthy. 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 epis-

temology 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 Schopen-

hauer’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 Schopen-

hauer. [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 primi-

tive, primordial, essentially prehistorical, prehuman roots, leaving no room for his-

tory. 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 psy-

choanalysis 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 strug-

gle 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-