ABSTRACT
Freud always believed that the science of psychoanalysis could contribute to the understanding of virtually all aspects of human life, not only to what could be learned about individuals from its practice in the clinic. “As a ‘depth psychology’, a theory of the mental unconscious, it can become indispensable to all the sciences which are concerned with the evolution of human civilization, and its major institutions such as art, religion and the social order” (Freud, 1926e, p. 248). He himself wrote several major texts on psychoanalytic aspects of the social, including Totem and Taboo (1912–13), Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c), The Future of an Illusion (1927c), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a), and Moses and Monotheism (1939a), and his example has been followed throughout the history of the field by many other psychoanalysts and writers influenced by psychoanalysis. Among the many instances one can cite of powerful and influential work of this kind are those by Adorno (1978), Fanon (1952), Mitscherlich & Mitscherlich (1975), Mitchell (1974), Marcuse (1955, 1958), and Žižek (1990, 1993).
