Psychoanalysis
The psychoanalytic current brings Freud’s investigation of unconscious processes and conflict into encounter with Frankfurt questions about authority and needs. Understanding institutions also requires asking why people attach themselves to particular authorities and how dependencies are experienced.
The unconscious and repression are central but distinct: the first concerns psychical activity beyond awareness; the second concerns excluding conflicting representatives from consciousness. Political coercion and psychical repression are not interchangeable mechanisms.
Fromm develops social character and humanistic psychoanalysis, while Marcuse examines the historical organization of drives. Their disagreement concerns how Freud should be reread. This entry describes a specific intellectual encounter, not current clinical guidance or an account of all psychoanalytic schools.
Sigmund Freud, Das Unbewusste; Die Verdrängung (1915).
Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930).
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1941).
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (1955), especially the Epilogue.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1941), Appendix: Character and the Social Process.