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PARTISAN REVIEW
ferred
to
any heal er who promises help . This standard human response
explains the sllccess of these movements. Young people find their needs
fulfill ed by other methods as well. Cults with strong gu rus are more
successful in lifting young peopl e out of their empty lives in the drug
culture than psychotherapy. T heir method is r igid disciplin e, a life of
harsh , ascetic rules and work, infantiliza tion under a strong leader.
These grownup children seem to need something they have not
received from parents and teachers. Of course, these cults do no t res ult
in the mature development of their fo ll owers.
Even in the thirti es in Europe, some analys ts warned tha t many
p eopl e expected miracles from psychoanalys is and tha t the reaction
would inevitabl y be di sappo intment. In th e United States, parti cu larl y
inclined to optimism , p eople had hoped th at psychi a try and psychoan–
alysis might be the solution for mankind 's p roblems, a kind of
salvation, instead we see disappo intment and anger.
Moreover, the damage done to our narcissism by Darwin has been
reinforced by psychoanalytic theory which accepts Darwin 's finding
that we belong to the mammali an species, tha t our in stinctu al dri ves
limit our possibilities. We are not born all alike and our constituti on
and sexual identity are p ar t o f our des tin y. Many people do no t want to
accept our obviousl y biolog ical na ture.
Another important line of a ttack, p arti cul a rl y in Europe, comes
from thinkers who accept Freud 's con cept of the confli ct between the
individual and society, but who believe that Freud did no t go far
enough in his cr itique of civilization. They try to achi eve a fu sion of
Freudian and Marxist concepts. The overthrow of capitalism will free
people from repression, a term whi ch here receives an analyti ca l and a
political meaning. Only in a noncapitalistic soc iety can the p ro blem of
neurosis be solved and an analysis be successful. Mos t, but no t all , of
these thinkers are sociologists. Some go so far as to sta te that a
successful anal ysis has to make the patient into a revoluti onary. They
do not consider the fact that precapitalisti c societies had their own
neuroses. In their passion to rescue mankind, these students o f Freud
and Marx exchange a critical stance, with whi ch they began their
studies, for a utopian vision . These hopes and predi ctions may be as
fallibl e as other Marxist predicti ons th at we h eard in Europe befo re and
after Hitler. Assumptions based on analyti cal knowl edge o f the human
psyche proved more often
to
be right. Freud 's pess imisti c remark in
1929, "One wonders , with concern , wha t the Sovi ets will do after they
have wiped out their bourgeois," was resented by many young analys ts .
A few years la ter, this implied predi ction was confirmed . In 19 19, Paul
