Psychoanalysis was seen as a bridge from economic determinism to ideology formation

Evidence

Fromm referred to Engels’s letter to Mehring of 14 July 1893, in which Engels complained about the way in which the specific derivation of political, legal and other ideological ideas from the basic facts of economics was being neglected. Fromm praised psychoanalysis as having finally provided a means of following `the path which leads from economic determinism through the human heart and mind and right on to the ideological conclusion’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 231

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures the precise methodological role Fromm assigned to psychoanalysis within historical materialism — the mediating ‘path from economics through psyche to ideology’.
• XREF: Links to the reader’s broader critical-theory grounding in Engels/orthodox Marxism and where psychoanalysis was inserted as a missing mediational link. — connects to: Psychoanalysis justified the Frankfurt circle’s contempt for specialized academic disciplines; Personal networks placed psychoanalysis inside the Institute of Social Research, linking it with Marxism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 214; Fromm proposed a historical-materialist anthropology fusing psychoanalysis with sociology. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 216 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Fromm saw psychoanalysis as filling Marxism’s missing link between ideology and economic base. #corroborates (0.95) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 329