ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that what led Sigmund Freud to privilege political language and logic in his discourse, was his endeavour to create an interdisciplinary science of the mind and human behaviour, which merges interpretation of meaning and causal explanation into one universe of discourse. It suggests that Freud structured the psyche in analogy to a polity, because it is in the nature of political discourse to combine references to causal forces over which actors have no control, with references to the self-conceptions and intentions of actors. A political reading of psychoanalysis constitutes an alternative which is preferable to the two dominant traditions of commentary on Freud. Both one's understanding of the psyche and of politics may benefit from an attempt to develop a discourse on power which is applicable to the external world and to the mind's internal reality, intertwines the interpretation of meaning with causal explanation, and thereby continues a project which Freud initiated about a century ago.
