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The Crisis in Psychology
263
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-
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