The Freudo-Marxist Tradition and the Critique of Psychotherapeutic Ideology

The ideology of psychotherapy is questioned through critical concepts taken from the Freudo-Marxist tradition. The paper first analyses in detail six determinant ideological processes detected in psychotherapy that three pioneers of Freudo-Marxism criticised in the 1920s: dualistic scission and metaphysical immobilisation (Luria); idealist generalisation and mechanistic determination (Bernfeld); and repressive adaptation and historical decontextualisation (Reich). Following this, it briefly reviews seven paired analogous processes that were denounced by continuators of the Freudo-Marxist tradition: valorative moralisation and the psychologisation of the social (Fenichel); instinctualrational deprivation and the mechanisation of the subject (Adorno); alienating performance and surplus repression (Marcuse); manipulation and dehumanising alienation (Fromm); abstraction and mythologising (Bleger); authoritarianism and suggestion (Caruso); and depoliticisation and rationalisation (Langer). The argument will show how Freudo- Marxist questionings of these operations - many now forgotten - are still current and can be inspiring and enriching for a modern critique of psychotherapy. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.