Letters
Editors: I much appreciated Ellen Willis's review of my book Secrets of the Soul (Winter 2005), but there was one assertion to which I need to respond. Willis writes, "In effect, Zaretsky the...
...Willis writes, "In effect, Zaretsky the historical materialist defines psychoanalysis as the ideological superstructure erected on the material base of the second industrial revolution...
...Not only is this idea wholly different from that of a superstructure...
...ELI ZARETSKY Berlin, Germany DISSENT / Summer 2005 n 127...
...In fact, I argued that psychoanalysis had an affinity, not with capitalism but with the spirit—the psychology and culture—of twentieth-century mass consumption...
...Psychoanalysis therefore served as a catalyst for the broad cultural revolution,'modernism"—that accompanied mass consumption...
...As a charismatic movement, psychoanalysis supplied the theory and practice for such ideals...
...This is inaccurate...
...it helps to explain why the latter idea became obsolete...
...rather they sought freedom from familial compulsions, from instinctual restraints, and from what Weber called "the Protestant ethic" on behalf of new ideals of personal life...
...Far from being a "materialist," I argued that twentieth-century men and women did not become consumers in order to supply markets...
Vol. 52 • July 2005 • No. 3
