All registrants will receive their link to join via ZOOM. Attendees will also receive access to the recording on the Monday after the course, available to watch back for 1 month.
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‘The motive of human society is in the last resort an economic one’ – it was Freud, not Marx, who made this statement, in his ‘Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis’. Understandably, therefore, the first half of the 20th century saw a number of serious and substantial attempts to bring Freud and Marx together to produce a comprehensive and integrated theory of human psychology and social organisation.
We will explore in detail three such projects: those of Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. Reich was a young, upcoming analyst in Freud’s circle, who saw himself as a pioneer in bringing the benefits of psychoanalysis to the masses, and who combined psychoanalytic and Marxist theory in ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’ (1933). Marcuse was a professional philosopher who became a leading member of the Frankfurt School. Trained in the high tradition of German philosophy – a pupil of Husserl and Heidegger – and deeply versed in Marxism, in 1955 he published ‘Eros and Civilisation’, a profound and extremely influential re-thinking of Freud’s theory of culture (as developed in ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’). Fromm was a philosopher and psychoanalyst, also a member of the Frankfurt School, who became one of the central figures in re-thinking Freud’s psychology (and Marx’s theory of capitalism) from a humanistic and existential perspective. His most important work is ‘The Fear of Freedom’ (1941).
We will put these three thinkers in dialogue with each other, evaluating them from a 21st century perspective, and asking the question: how do the insights and methods of analysis of Freud and Marx stand up today?
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Keith Barrett BA PhD received his first degree in philosophy from Oxford University after having spent three years working as a nursing assistant in psychiatric hospitals. It was in this practical context that Keith first encountered existentialism and psychoanalysis. He then began postgraduate studies on both Freud and Heidegger, leading finally to a PhD from the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL for a dissertation on ‘Freud’s Self-Analysis’. Keith has been a philosophy teacher for over 20 years, and has been delivering courses at the Freud Museum for over a decade, where he has developed a series of introductory lectures on Freud, psychoanalysis after Freud, and exploring the overlap of philosophy and psychoanalysis.
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Schedule:
This course will take place over 2 days: 10 and 11 October 2024, from 13.30 – 17.00 each day (time includes a tea break). All attendees will also receive access to the recording.
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Tickets £ 45
Members’ Discount: Freud Museum Members will be able to receive a 20% discount on tickets with a special promocode. Details will be circulated to all Members via email.
Bursary: A limited number of £15 bursary places will be available for those under financial hardship. Priority will be given to UK unemployed and PIP/ESA claimants. Please email [email protected] to apply for a bursary.
The purpose of this course is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular public income.
