Customer Reviews

Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union

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Although as the earlier reviewer noted, the emphasis of this book is on what the founders of the Soviet Union thought of psychoanalysis, not of the opposite side of the relation, one very astute chapter makes it clear that Sigmund Freud himself believed that the Marxists were right to focus on what he called "the decisive influence which the economic circumstances of men have upon their intellectual, ethical and artistic attitudes." Also, that he thought that the Marxist view of the class struggle was a too shallow one, assigning to recent centuries conflicts that were, rather, primordial. Behind the class struggle, according to Freud, there stands the struggle between father and son, between established clan leader and rebellious challenger. In this spirit, Freud heavily criticized the Soviet Union, writing in 1932 that its leaders had made themselves "inaccessible to doubt, without feeling for the suffering of others if they stand in the way of their intentions."

This is a fantastically good book, which challenges some conventional misconceptions about both Freudianism and early Soviet communism.

I would have appreciated more material on the attitude of some of the dissident Freudians, like Reich, toward the new Soviet Union. But the emphasis is on the other side of the equation -- the way the Leninists viewed Freudianism, and the psychoanalysts within their own country.

The material is complicated, but Miller makes it as straightforward as humanly possible.