I wrote: > > most psychology -- including Freudian psychoanalysis -- is extremely > > individualistic, especially in practice. Or it focuses on > the behavior > > and/or consciousness of the "average" person in society...
Ted W. writes: > Kleinian psychoanalysis isn't "individualistic" if you mean > by this has > little room for finding the source of psychopathology in social > relations. Though it gives a significant role to "constitutional" > factors (particularly in the case of schizophrenia, manic depression > and autism), it emphasizes the role of social relations. This also > provides the basis for the notion of an average individual > type (e.g. a > type dominated by "greed") since common relations will generate a > common type (this is the central implication of the relational concept > of essence spelled out in the sixth thesis on Feuerbach). I said _most_ psychology. I really don't know anything about Melanie Klein's work. > Keynes's economics (a) gives a significant role to irrational > psychology in the determination of economic behaviour and (b) most > derives its understands this irrational psychology from > psychoanalysis. I didn't know the second part. > I think (a) is true of Marx's economics as well. In Marx, > it derives > from the sublation of German idealism, specifically of the role Hegel > gives to the "passions" in his account of the the historical process > through which mind develops to rationality. my impression is that Marx's vision of psychology was mostly descriptive, though he did learn a lot from the Aristotelian tradition of the ideal happy and moral human life in society (the opposite of alienation). Jim D.
