Freud was a therapeutic "pessimistic," who doubtedįundamental personal changes could be attained through psy choanalysis. This was even-or exactly-true of the knotty issue of therapy.
Freud was a theoretical radical and a political conservative the neo-Freudians were theoretical conservatives and political Hberals. The conservative Freud saw further about the nature of indi vidual and society than his successors, who announced their liberalism and renounced his insights.
Investi gation may show that the "liberal" psychology is conservative, the "conservative" psychology liberal. This is not judging, however it is cataloging. How do we know who is a "radical" or a "feminist" or a "conservative"? That's easy. This is hardly a novel idea, but is frequently forgotten more and more we judge thinkers by their self-proclaimed identities. They are not the same and may be in complete opposition. Nevertheless any serious appraisal of psychology or soci ology-or any discipline-must seek to separate the political package and the theoretical substance. Freud and company seemed too old-fashioned. Laing and radical psychologists appealed to the 1960s generation. For the same reason the lingo of revolution that infused R.D. The liberal tone made the neo- and post-Freudians at tractive to Americans. The critics of psychoanalysis considered themselves to the left of Freud and the Freudians, who were judged conservatives, if not reaction aries. It is important to realize that this transition occurred under the star of liberalism and, sometimes, socialism. I saw the transition from Freud to the neo-Freudians and post-Freud ians as regression, the loss of insight and substance. Social Amnesia might be seen as a case study of this idea. 1 Society may be losing its mind, a notion Freud occasionally entertained. Undoubtedly we have more infor mation and data, but we may understand less and less. In fact, I suggested in Social Amnesia, and developed elsewhere, the opposite proposition: perhaps, intelligence is dwindling in advanced industrial society. Very simply, the widespread assumption of progress in the humanities and social sciences cannot be accepted in toto. Though newer cars, tele phones, and x-ray machines are superior to older ones, newer philosophers, psychologists, and literary critics may not be. Yet the wholesale rejection of past as past bespeaks the marketing mentality: the assumption today is Moreover, we are convinced that today we know so much more about sexuality, the family, and the individual than previous genera tions. With these plotted, we have a person figured out. We increasingly judge a thinker by situating him or her on a grid of race, gender, and time, an easier proposition than evaluating someone's thought. T he criticism implied that those who come later are smarter: the critics and their friends. For the revolutionary numerolo gists to be nineteenth century meant to be hopelessly back ward.
To point out when someone was born did not seem especially insightful. What bothered me was not a sheer ignorance of psychoana lytic thinking, but the cheap criticism that Freud was nine teenth century. In Social Amnesia the issue was less the Viennese doc tor than the larger entanglement of psychology and history. The bookstore carried Pavlov, the Russian physiologist billed as a materialist and revolution ary, not Freud who was attacked as an idealist and reactionary. Anti-psychoanalytic sentiment flourished, typified by Kate Millet's Sexual Politics, which denounced Freud as the most significant individual in the sexual "counterrevolution." It was a testimony to my limited powers of persuasion that I never overcame the prevailing attitude. At the time-the early 1970s-I was part of a Boston bookstore "collective" that intenninably discussed everything from the titles the store should stock to the details of our lives. Those fires have not reignited, and perhaps the book's po lemical heat recalls a period irrevocably past. Introduction to the Transaction Edition Social Amnesia was written amid the dying embers of the new left.
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