ABSTRACT
The processes of transformation and modernization undergone by Austrian society in the twentieth century naturally include the sphere of private life as well. Instead, scholars have come to recognize the private sphere as being one of the major impulses towards the modernization of society, even if private life is connected in practice to the world of work and society at large in thousands of different ways. Thus, the private sphere is neither completely autonomous nor wholly determined by society. From the psychoanalytically oriented point of view, it's clear that the private sphere brings forth desires which create a cumulative energy helping to drive "culture" in general and the "modernization" of society in particular. Upto the 1950s and 1960s, the late patriarchal model profoundly influenced the private sphere among the upper working class the enlarged middle classes when thousands of men were away at the front or in prisoner-of-war camps.
