Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud laid the premise for Critical Theory in stating that between the individual and society there is a conflict: civilisation rests on the need to repress innate impulses and the demands for instant gratification. Not only a civilisation, but any society with its customs and taboos, must restrain the total freedom of the individual to act on instinct, such as rape and murder. The individual must find outlets for his repressed instincts, which are classifiable into two types: Thanatos (death/destruction) and Eros (sex). The ‘sublimation’ of those instincts is expressed as culture. The repressed psychical energy, called libido, is redirected into pursuits other than orgasm or aggression. This theory culminated in Freud’s influential book Civilisation and its Discontents, published in 1930. Freud considered modern civilisation to have reached a crisis point, concluding:
The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural development in it will succeed in mastering the derangements of communal life caused by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. … Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate each other to the last man. They know this — hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. And now it may be expected that the other of the two ‘heavenly forces’ — immortal Eros — will put forth his strength so as to maintain himself alongside of his equally immortal adversary.47
To Freudian psychoanalysis the Critical Theorists combined the doctrine of Marx on class struggle. The result was that the individual, rather than the class, must be freed from the oppression and repression of ‘bourgeoisie society’, and that this primarily involved the free expression of Eros. This reached such dogmatism that by the time The Authoritarian Personality was published shortly after World War II, one’s mental health was judged on the extent to which one identified with left-wing attitudes. This required a hi-jacking of Freud.
Freud had not claimed that psychoanalysis could heal society. While Freud said that the way neuroses are diagnosed in an individual might be used to diagnose collective or social neuroses, it ‘behoves us to be very careful’ when using analogies between the individual and society. He thought that diagnosis of ‘social neuroses’ would not be of use ‘since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy’. Nonetheless, Freud expected that some day someone would try to diagnose social neuroses.48 The latter became the purpose of Critical Theory and social science research. Social engineering became the ‘therapy’; ‘social control’ the aim.