ABSTRACT
This chapter will complement the chapter on psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory. We will also highlight connections with phenomenology theory. Specifically, we have discussed how psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory focus attention on the structures and processes of an individual's unconscious, what Freud termed "the instincts and their vicissitudes" (1915/1963c). Some analysts, such as Fromm (1966), who was also an early critical theorist, as well as Groddeck (1977) and Reich (1946), were well aware of the role of society in shaping personality and behavior. They recognized the power society holds in relation to the individual even at an unconscious level. Freud, in several of his writings and particularly in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930/1962a), noted the restraining nature of society and culture on the individual. But his main focus was on the individual's unconscious, the vicissitudes of the instincts, and particularly the role of aggression and guilt in relation to the development of civilization. In spite of his intrapsychic focus, and though he thought that socialism, as a means to do away with the effects of the aggressive instincts, was an "untenable illusion," Freud also wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents that:
Anyone who has tasted the misery of poverty in his own youth and has experienced the indifference and arrogance of the well-to-do, should be safe from the suspicion of having no understanding or good will toward endeavors to fight against the inequality of wealth among men Isic] and all that leads to. (1930/1962a,p.60)
• the development of European sociology beginning with August Comte;
• the beginnings of selected movements in American sociology and particularly the development of the Chicago School of sociology; and
• explore the work of the Chicago School of philosophy, social psychology, and sociology, and particularly the contribution of George Herbert Mead.
