Abstract

Psychoanalysis is central to the «critical theory» of the Frankfurt School, a feature it shares with «Freudo-Marxism». The articulation between Marx and Freud can however take on various meanings. Starting from the programme of Horkheimer and Fromm in the 1930s, the article shows how the articulation went through two contrasting developments, testifying to two distinct conceptions of history. We can thus distinguish between the position of Fromm who, repudiating the theory of drives, was to become a «revisionist», drawing on psychoanalysis as a component in a theory of socialization, and an antithetical position, in line with the use of psychoanalysis which Adorno shares with Benjamin, and to which Horkheimer would subscribe, where the radicality of Freud constitutes the critical principle through which is revealed the social processes of reification, thus subverting the materialist framework. Evidence of this opposition can be found in the neo-revisionist quarrel (between Marcuse and Fromm) and, to a certain extent, in Habermas and Honneth, whose work shows a certain continuity with that of Fromm.