ABSTRACT
Freud is best read, not as the medical scientist he often claimed to be, but as the social and cultural theorist he always aspired to be. Freud took up the study of biology and medicine, not out of scientific curiosity, but to address the most fundamental and vital cultural problems, and particularly the origins and nature of religion, morality, and tradition, and the direction of contemporary cultural development. Nevertheless, the myth of Freud, the medical scientist has persisted, serving the interests of Freud and his supporters, as well as his critics. Regrettably, it has also contributed to fundamental misunderstandings of Freud’s thought. Even at the height of his influence—from the 1930s to the 1970s—the understanding of Freud’s social and cultural thought was frequently simplistic and distorted. Freudian concepts (e.g., “repression” and “internalization”), often poorly understood, were used to patch up the ready-made theoretical systems of others—particularly Marx and Durkheim—and to add a seemingly “scientific gloss” to the study of “social reproduction,” ultimately rendering Freud irrelevant for social theorists. To recover the more complex and illuminating social theory that lies at the heart of Freud’s work, we must return to Freud’s texts and retrace his intellectual development.
