ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has occupied an anomalous position among liberals and Marxists for many years. A great deal of the confusion prevailing in discussions about psychoanalysis lies in the fact that in the course of the past few decades there have emerged a number of different “schools” of psychoanalysis representing various degrees of divergence from orthodox Freudian theory. Psychoanalysis today, however, although it still rests on the broad foundations of Freud’s basic discoveries, encompasses a wide variety of theoretical and practical viewpoints. Freud pointed out that the Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of all neuroses. Many progressives have grown to suspect psychoanalysis because so often radicals undergoing psychoanalytic treatment have emerged from it with their radical fervor lost or seriously impaired.
