ABSTRACT
In late capitalism, as throughout the history of the human species, deeper body of alienated infantile feeling is relegated to the unconscious. Therapy appears seamless: even when pretending to be transcendent, the reward it dangles is no eschatological grappling with ultimate but an ultimately mundane, quite eligible for commodification. The concept of what psychotherapy can be has come a long way from S. Freud’s initial insight that making the unconscious conscious may relieve neurotic suffering. Therapy does not exist apart from the neurosis it is supposed to remedy. Neurosis therefore is an auxiliary form of inner domination which reproduces external domination on the realm of the unconscious. Normal neurosis may be roughly identified with the neurotic character; it is the standard pattern of neurotic experience imposed by the established conflicts of everyday life, and adapted to them. In addition to churning out saleable desire for the age of consumerism, neurosis has a number of other basic functions under late capitalism.
