Psychoanalysis now deepens the self-alienation it once diagnosed

Evidence

The last grandly-conceived theorem of bourgeois self-criticism has become a means of making bourgeois self-alienation, in its final phase, absolute, and of rendering ineffectual the lingering awareness of the ancient wound, in which lies hope of a better future. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 78

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s other essays on psychoanalysis and the culture industry; also to Fromm’s and Marcuse’s critiques of Freud’s adaptation in the Culture and Personality school — plausible cross-reference to the broader Frankfurt School circle. — connects to: Psychoanalysis is undone by the external super-ego it identified; Self-criticism becomes performative ritual rather than operative change — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 951; Psychology and psychiatry co-evolved with changing norms of the self — Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing…, 730

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalysis is undone by the external super-ego it identified #expands (0.80)
• Self-criticism becomes performative ritual rather than operative change #exemplifies (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 951