Adorno defended Freud’s instinct theory against neo-Freudian revisionist critiques

Evidence

Adorno began by examining the revisionists’ attack on Freud’s instinct theory. Instinctivism, he argued, can mean either a mechanical division of the human soul into fixed instincts or a flexible deduction of the psyche from pleasure and self-preservation strivings, with almost infinite variations. Freud’s was the latter. The revisionists were thus incorrect in accusing him of being mechanistic, when in fact it was their hypostatization of character types that really deserved that epithet. For all their stress on historical influences, they were less attuned than Freud to the “inner history” of the libido. By overstressing the importance of the ego, they ignored its genetic interaction with the id: “Concretely, the denunciation of Freud’s so-called instinctivism amounts to the denial that culture, by enforcing restrictions on libidinal and particularly on destructive drives, is instrumental in bringing about repressions, guilt feelings, and need for self-punishment.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 358

Categorization

• XREF: Prefigures Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization critique of revisionism; also connects to the general Freud-Marx synthesis debate in the Frankfurt School. — connects to: Freudian political psychology produced many hypotheses but drew reductionism critiques — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 332; Horkheimer defended Freud against Fromm’s critique of bourgeois elements in his thinking — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 356; Marxist theories of false consciousness merged with Freudian psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 100 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The claim that revisionists hypostatize character types — worth tracking how this argument recurs in later Adorno/Marcuse texts.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer defended Freud against Fromm’s critique of bourgeois elements in his thinking #corroborates (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 356
• Marxist theories of false consciousness merged with Freudian psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School. #expands (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 100
• Freudian political psychology produced many hypotheses but drew reductionism critiques #qualifies (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 332