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FREDERICK C. CREWS
ism; Marcuse cannot think beyond the welfare state and the self-im–
proving hobbies of leisure time. Brown, in contrast, promises nothing
less than a "diagnosis of the universal neurosis of mankind, in which
psychoanalysis is itself a symptom and a stage"; and his diagnosis
is
followed by a prescription for total cure.
To come under the spell of
Life Against Death,
as many of us
did eight years ago, is to be lifted suddenly above the plane of
academic cliche and to conceive a new intensity of self-investigation.
Here, perhaps-and many readers still think so-was a scientific
refutation of all social ideals that negate the life of the body. Perhaps
psychoanalysis alone would suffice to decipher and redeem the ir–
rationality of history. Though one could do worse than to pursue this
hope to the end, Brown as its advocate comes to seem less and less
reliable as one's concern shifts from personal catharsis to the mis–
fortunes of classes and states. One such disillusionment, at any rate,
lies behind this essay. My purpose in treating Brown at length is to
show that his use of psychological theory is finally a disservice to the
important cause of applied psychoanalysis. I think it is necessary to
challenge the flourishing cult of Brown among scientifically impres–
sionable humanists- those who are drawn to any set of ideas that
defends poetic insight against factual positivism. When the ideas are
as theoretically and empirically defective as Brown's, literary intel–
lectuals who champion them merely reinforce their own role as in–
nocuous traditionalists within a society that needs criticism, while
psychoanalysis as a vital style of thought continues to languish in dis–
repute among the rest of the intellectual community.
Readers who know Brown's second ambitious book,
Love's Body,
with its elfin manner, its religious imagery and its cryptic emphasis on
self-immolation and a final silence, will not need to
be
told that he
no longer seriously purports to expound a scientific point of view. My
impression, however, is that many of these readers dismiss the new
book as "absolutely mad" and return to
Life Against Death
with un–
diminished faith in its claim to embody the Freudian outlook on his–
tory. But there is nothing mad about
Love's Body;
it has a strong
internal logic, and its starting-point is the philosophy of body con–
sciousness that was already spelled out in the final chapter of
Life
Against Death.
To
be
sure, Brown has been spiritually on the move,
but he is no less trustworthy an authority on psychoanalysis than
before. For the truth is that despite Lionel Trilling's encomium on
