Charles Brown wrote:
Marxist psychology, as Marxism must see individual consciousness as made in caring and reproductive labor, which is done predominantly by women.
Kleinian psychoanalysis provides an account of the kind of "caring" required to develop a strong integrated "ego" capable of rational "consciousness," i.e. for the development of the ego that would characterize what Marx calls "true individuality." It's not clear to me how Lacanian psychoanalyis could do this, given that it has no logical space for the ideas either of rational consciousness or of "free self-determination" (the idea Marx identifies with "true individuality"). Keynes, as I've frequently pointed out, integrated ontological and anthropological ideas similar to Marx's (ideas that include "internal relations," "self-determination" and the "good" elaborated as creating and appropriating beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition) and psychoanalytic psychology. By the way, someone over on LBO pointed today to a new BBC series, The Trap - What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom, directed by Adam Curtis. Curtis also directed the the previous BBC series, The Century of the Self, examining the influence of psychoanalysis on, among other things, the 20th century development of "Public Relations" in the US). The latter series is available on the internet: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2637635365191428174> The Wikipedia blurb <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_% 28television_documentary_series%29> for the series includes the following: "The series consists of three one-hour programmes which will explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically: 'how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom.'" The first episode, broadcast on March 11 is described in part as follows:
1. "F**k You Buddy" (11 March, 2007) In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought. The programme traces the development of game theory with particular reference to the formulae of John Nash, whose paranoid schizophrenia coloured his entire outlook of human behaviour (film of an older and wiser Nash recanting his earlier ideas about people is also shown). Nash believed that all humans were inherently suspicious and selfish creatures that strategised constantly. He invented system games reflecting this belief, including one called Fuck You Buddy, in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken.
Ted
