The Reception of Psychoanalysis in the Formation of the Critical Theory: from the Interdisciplinary Materialism to the Critique of Instrumental Reason (1929-1947)

• Grant number: 15/11323-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2015
• Effective date (End): March 01, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Severino Nobre
• Grantee: Paulo Henrique Yamawake
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/04814-0 - The elective affinity between the works of Horkheimer and Fromm: a research on the studies on authority and family, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The aim of our research is to investigate the reception of psychoanalysis in the Critical Theory in its formation, i.e., in the first theoretical orientations of the Institut für Sozialforschung, under the direction of Max Horkheimer. More accurately, we shall study two moments: the reception of psychoanalysis in the 1930's made by the critical model of Interdisciplinary Materialism; and the reception of the 1940's made by the model of the Critique of the Instrumental Reason. Our research presents the hypothesis that the appropriation of the Freud's drive theory (Triebtheorie) is central not only to understand the reception of psychoanalysis in both moments, but also to see the differences in the time diagnosis in each critical model. In the 1930's, the Interdisciplinary Materialism, especially Horkheimer and Erich Fromm, receives the psychoanalysis by accepting the first formulation of the drive theory (formed by the pair sexual drive and self-preservation drive) which has a plasticity that allows inserting psychoanalytical concepts in a historical and materialistic perspective. But the break with Fromm, the partnership between Horkheimer and Adorno, and the formulation of a new time diagnosis, led the Institut to see the limitations of the critique made by the Interdisciplinary Materialism. Then, they adopted, in a peculiar manner, the second formulation of the Freudian drive theory (precisely the death drive), in a trans-historical perspective of the development of the instrumental reason, which make the domination unavoidable.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

YAMAWAKE, Paulo Henrique. The reception of psychoanalysis in the early critical theory: from the interdisciplinary materialism to the critique of instrumental reason. 2020. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.