Horkheimer read psychoanalysis as a conformist force that domesticated political nonconformists

Evidence

In an aphorism in Dawn, and again in 1938 in his essay on Montaigne and the Function of Scepticism', Horkheimer had criticized psychoanalysis as being a tool of conformism which tended to expose, in a reproachful way, the aggressive tendencies of neurotics, nonconformists and those in opposition, and attempted to turn them into people who, in a horrifying world full of injustices, would be able to present themselves as natural and uninhibited, as if everything was all right. And in a letter to Benjamin in 1935 he had mentioned that a proper historical orientation was lacking in Freud's writings, and that they expressed despair at existing reality in terms of professorial unease’. Freud’s critique of existing reality was not vehement or aggressive enough for him. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 290

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the Institute’s later ambivalence about empirical psychoanalytic research and to Fromm’s own break with the Institute over analytic vs. social-psychological method. — connects to: Horkheimer saw psychoanalysis as a conformist tool at odds with radical critique. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1110; Horkheimer defended Freud against Fromm’s critique of bourgeois elements in his thinking — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 356; Horkheimer rejected Freud’s death instinct for implying passive acceptance of oppressive social order — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 352
• DEFINE: Clarifies precisely what Horkheimer objected to in Freud — missing historical orientation and insufficiently vehement critique of existing reality.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Horkheimer saw psychoanalysis as a conformist tool at odds with radical critique. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1110; Horkheimer defended Freud against Fromm’s critique of bourgeois elements in his thinking — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 356; Horkheimer rejected Freud’s death instinct for implying passive acceptance of oppressive social order — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 352

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer saw psychoanalysis as a conformist tool at odds with radical critique. #corroborates (0.98) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1110
• Horkheimer defended Freud against Fromm’s critique of bourgeois elements in his thinking #complicates (0.82) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 356