ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has provided the key to an understanding of the often mysterious acting and feeling of the individual personality. It has shown that this irrational acting and feeling are the result of certain instinctual impulses, of which the actor is often unconscious, but which compulsively condition him or her. Historical materialism would appear to assume that it is the economic interest, the acquisitive interest, which primarily determines the conscious acting and feeling of people, while psychoanalysis would allocate the corresponding role to sexuality. So far as psychoanalysis is concerned, the misconception arises not primarily because Sigmund Freud ascribed a major role to the instinct of self preservation, alongside the sexual drives which are understood to go beyond the genital. Every form of society has not only its own economic and political, but also its specific libidinous structure, and psychoanalysis can finally explain certain deviations from the course of development expected on the basis of the economic preconditions.
