Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology

by Russell Jacoby

Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance - society's own past. In this book, Jacoby excavates the critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and critical content. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is perpetually lost under the pressure of society. It is simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in psychology. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades.In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a pseudo-historical consciousness. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for "thinking against the grain - an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Cultural, Social Science

Hardcover

First published January 28, 1975

About the author

Russell Jacoby (born April 23, 1945) is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an author and a critic of academic culture. His fields of interest are twentieth-century European and American intellectual and cultural history, specifically the history of intellectuals and education.

Reviews

[Vladimir · Rating 4 out of 5]

"....because the individual is being administered out of existence - and with it individual experience and emotions - it takes more effort than ever to keep the last fragments alive. Psychic suffocation haunts the reified. The desperation of men and women, for good reason, increases visibly. Today the process of reification is a storm tide; and the human subject is locked in the basement. The frantic search for authenticity, experience, emotions, is the pounding on the ceiling as the water rises."

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What Georg Lukács did for Marxism in 'What is Orthodox Marxism?' has not been done for Freudianism." (12-13)

"If the history of psychology is the history of forgetting, Adler was the first, but by no means the last, to forget." (44)

Russell Jacoby explores the betrayal of psychological radicalism by Alfred Adler, which Jacoby argues has imbued major psychological currents following Freudianism. For Jacoby, the Frankfurt School thinkers György Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse represent the other side of psychoanalysis. Rather than distorting and repressing the radical implications of psychoanalysis, by individualising its application and minimising the influence of society, the Frankfurt School thinkers embraced them, and fixed their gaze on the mass culture which their contemporaries refused to engage with. Furthermore, they embraced the radical subjectivity inherent in psychoanalysis, without shoehorning their understanding of society into a reductionist sociology which attempted to reduce the world to economics (as in vulgar Marxism) or radical subjectivity (as in the psychology of Cooper and Laing). Americanisation of psychoanalysis destroyed its radical core, psychoanalysis became a 'how to guide' (see The Art of Loving), a boutique good, a one-stop shop fix-all therapy. Freudianism died and, in its place, an even more conformist psychology took place...

[Sidra Morgan-Montoya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this among my mom’s old books from her Marriage & Family Therapy graduate studies, and am so glad I picked it up. Jacoby presents a critique of responses to Freudian psychoanalytic theory that depend on incomplete/revisionist readings of Freud and dull the political potential of psychoanalysis even as they are trying to advance a leftist politic in their work. What’s at stake is an accurate understanding of the interplay of social structures and individual psychological experience, and I found the theory Jacoby advances to be very compelling.

I’m giving it four stars because Jacoby does not mention feminism or critical race theory even once. I know for a fact there were Marxist feminist and post-colonial scholars working during his time that were theorizing on similar topics (Fanon comes to mind), and I would have liked to see him engage and acknowledge their work a little when outlining Critical Theory as an alternative to “conformist psychology.”

Still very glad I read this book, though. It has a lot of insight into how late stage capitalism has shaped/stunted our ability to conceive of radical social change, and some of what he wrote about obsession with subjectivity being an outgrowth of capitalism feels extremely relevant to social media in 2021.

[Sanja Zanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't help not to enjoy a good criticism of positivism and humanism with additional insight into the relevant historical context.
On the other hand, the book was somewhat difficult to follow due to a ridiculously bad translation and even worse grammatical and spelling fails in this puzzling symbiosis of Serbian and Croatian. Anyone reading the edition by SHURA publikacije, Opatija, 2014, heads up. My very favorite was "bihejviorizam".

Oh, bihejv.

[Colin Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a single chapter from this book titled "Negative Psychoanalysis and Marxism." Jacoby defines negative psychoanalysis as that which "knows only a negative relationship; it examines the psychic forms that have diverted, impeded, or dissolved a historical and class consciousness" (99). As words such as "historical" and "class consciousness" suggest, Jacoby explores incorporating psychoanalysis and Marxism and the methods of realizing this incorporation. He suggests, "negative psychoanalysis is psychoanalysis refracted through Marxism" (99). In this way, negative psychoanalysis is a late-Freudian understanding of psychoanalysis. That is to say, negative psychoanalysis rejects a domesticated psychoanalysis (the early, pre-1920 Freudian psychoanalysis). Negative psychoanalysis is, properly understood, a psychoanalysis that embraces the necessity of failure. Again, from Jacoby: "If critical theory as negative psychoanalysis is not to succumb to the lure of the chase nor flee into old slogans, it must plumb the psychic depths for sounds of sadness and revolt" (100). This marriage of "sadness" and "revolt" is, broadly speaking, the union of psychoanalysis and Marxism. A more affirmative psychoanalysis may attempt to articulate an existence beyond lack, an existence beyond subjectivity even. This mirrors a more affirmative Marxism that understands the struggle against capitalism as one that will inevitably lead to harmonious utopianism (e.g., Marx's "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner").

[David Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really great concept critiquing neo-Freudians for simplifying therapy and leaving it just for surface soothing of individuals while forgetting the social origins of the problems in the first place. Sadly the language he uses is so arcane that it limits the audience. If you haven't studied critical theory and Marxism and are conversant in the dialectic, then it'll just give you a headache.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology (Hardcover)
by Russell Jacoby

https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-co...

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Midway through the chapter on the late 60's involution of the New Left was great. The return of the repressed.