Adorno’s 1927 epistemology thesis already contained the Marxist turn against psychoanalysis

Evidence

We regard the significance of psychoanalysis so highly because it serves the investigation of the unconscious without burdening it with any inappropriate metaphysical pathos, and because its investigations are directed at the elimination of unconscious states and thus offer a decisive weapon against every sort of metaphysics of the instincts and deification of mere dull, organic life.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 329 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin rested basically on three complexes of factors: (1) In important matters, Benjamin was too archaic for him, or too involved in myth, or not dialectically transcendent enough, or not thoroughly dialectical enough. (2) With regard to the demystification of art' as a special case of the dialectical self-dissolution of myth, Adorno accused Benjamin of underestimating, on the one hand, the technological rationality of autonomous art and thereby the destruction of its own aura; and, on the other, of underestimating the immanent irrationality of everyday art and the reflexive’ character of its audience, the masses, including the proletariat. (3) In addition, he considered it a fatal error that Benjamin could regard a series of facts as being unrelated to the philosophy of history, as being collective subjective phenomena' of some sort. Benjamin was thus, in Adorno's view, not able to account for the objective power of the commodity fetish, and was carrying out an un-Marxist form of psychologization which was dangerously close to that of C.G. Jung. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869</cite> (#qualifies`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno prized psychoanalysis as a weapon against instinct metaphysics. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 329; Adorno saw psychoanalysis as an empirical science completing transcendental philosophy; Adorno’s critique of Benjamin charged him with un-Marxist psychologizing — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 869

Broader Connections

• Adorno prized psychoanalysis as a weapon against instinct metaphysics. #complicates (0.88) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 329
• Adorno saw psychoanalysis as an empirical science completing transcendental philosophy #complicates (0.85)
• Adorno’s critique of Benjamin charged him with un-Marxist psychologizing #qualifies (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869