ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins by arguing in favor of interpreting Freud as a spontaneous dialectical materialist, particularly apropos the perennial philosophical mind-body problem. In this, the author follows in the footsteps both of certain classical Freudo-Marxists (e.g., Reich, Fenichel, and Marcuse) as well as, more recently, of Lacan, Althusser, and those one might dub “Lacano-Marxists” (e.g., Žižek). And, the author focuses not only on the Freudian metapsychological concept of drive (Trieb) as pivotal to a psychoanalytic depiction of mind vis-à-vis body, but also zeroes in on the anal drive in particular as a Cartesian-style metaphorical pineal gland knotting together soma and psyche. Moreover, as the author goes on to show, a Lacanian revisiting of Freud’s musings about anal erotism and anal character traits enables a theory of mind/psyche taking these musings into account to proffer not only a dialectical materialist model of subjectivity, but also a historical materialist one too in which like-mindedness is shaped and mediated by the socioeconomic dimensions foregrounded by the Marxist critique of political economy. The author’s intervention on this occasion ultimately aims to make progress on two fronts: first, within Marxism itself, facilitating further reconsideration of the infrastructure-superstructure distinction on the basis of what psychoanalysis suggests apropos the mind-body rapport; second, between Marxism and psychoanalysis, utilizing a Lacano-Marxist re-conception of the anal drive to advance the radical leftist criticism of capitalism.
