COMMENTS
455
Federn , a close coworker of Freud , wrote a brilliant lilli e p aper, "The
Fa therl ess Society," in whi ch he exp ressed the hope tha t the dep arture
of the Kaiser and the kings mi ght lead to a government based on the
democra ti c concept of bro therhood, but at the same time, he prescientl y
expressed his fear th a t the wish for the father would once again des troy
allemp ts to achi eve a genuinel y free society.
H erbert Marcuse, using the term repress ion in its po litical and
analyt ic meaning, has asserted th a t th e larger portion of sexual
repress ion in modern civiliza tion was maintained only in the "servi ce
of capitalist domin a ti on " and is not needed any more as modern
techn ique replaces hard labor. This idea may throw some light on the
reasons for different allitudes toward sexual freedom in different
periods. But Marcuse in his later work retracts hi s implied predi ction
and sees the present sexu al permiss iveness as another mean s of enforc–
ing capitalist domin a tion .
It
seems that the Marxist con cept of the
human p syche underes tima tes its compl exity and its inner conflicts .
It is no t poss ible to predi ct the future of mental h ealth and
therapy. T he fa te of psychoanalys is as th erap y dep ends on the future of
our culture, which dep ends on too many incalcul able factors to p ermit
any opinion . We know onl y tha t cultural fashions come and go, and
that leaves some hop e. The clima te may change aga in .
People see the disso lution of the famil y, the lack of happin ess in
love, th e decline of the school s, the enfeebling drug life, the end of
peaceful living in our cities . When Freud wrote in 1929 that "civilized
society is perpetuall y threa tened with disintegration ," few p eopl e, even
his close adherents, gave much weight to this statement. But now
people have become fri ghtened . Parents and educators may realize how
they h ave abandoned their children through mistaken ideologi es .
Parents may rediscover wha t has always been known and certainly
confirmed by p sych oanalytic expl oration , that children are lillIe
savages who need guidance and standards for civilized living and have
to develop a reasonabl e superego for their own fun ctioning, for the
integration of different parts of their p ersonality, and for the preserva–
tion of social cohes ion . A less permissive understanding of the child 's
sexuality and a beller comprehension of the danger of unchecked
human drives and of the need for th e inces t taboo as the root of all firm
rul es are essential. Above all , p arents have to learn again to live the life
of grownups according to standards with which children can identify.
