ABSTRACT
The main objective of this article is to understand, on the one hand, the dialogical relationships between the texts of Voloshinov and Freud's theory and, on the other hand, the reception of Freud among Soviet Marxists from the first half of the 1920s and by European Marxists. Our main findings included evidence that: a great number of Soviet Marxists from the period mentioned argued that Marxism and Freudianism interfaced regarding the same presuppositions of dialectical materialism; Voloshinov rejected Freudianism, above all, due to Freud's criticism of the Soviet State; and, finally, Soviet and European Marxists tried to link Freudianism to Marxism, or trace the differences between the two theories.
KEYWORDS:
Freudianism; Marxism; Voloshinov
RESUMO
O objetivo central deste artigo é compreender, por um lado, as relações dialógicas entre os textos de Volóchinov e a teoria de Freud e, por outro, a recepção do freudismo entre marxistas soviéticos da primeira metade dos anos 1920 e marxistas europeus. Nossas principais descobertas foram: boa parte dos marxistas soviéticos do período mencionado argumentavam que o marxismo e o freudismo encontravam-se sob os mesmos pressupostos do materialismo dialético, Volóchinov rejeita o freudismo sobretudo em razão das críticas de Freud ao Estado soviético, marxistas soviéticos e europeus ora tentaram unir freudismo ao marxismo, ora buscaram traçar as diferenças entre as duas teorias.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Freudismo; Marxismo; Volóchinov
Introduction
One aspect of the work done by the Bakhtin Circle that has yet to be explored is Valentin Nikolaevitch Voloshinov's (1895-1936) interest in psychoanalysis,1 which resulted in the writing of two interrelated texts: the article Pelo lado do social. Sobre o freudismo [Beyond the Social: On Freudianism] (1925)2 and the book Freudianism: A Critical Sketch (1987) / Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (1976).3 The article of 1925 is an expanded abstract (avtoreferát) of the book published two years later, both containing scientific production by Voloshinov, described in the first (1925-1926) and third (1927- 1928) reports presented to the Institute for the Comparative History of the Languages and Literatures of the West and East (ILIaZV - Institút Sravnítelnoi Istórii literatúr i iazykóv Západa i Vostóka) (p.302, op. 2, no. 51).
With respect to his interest in Freudianism, Voloshinov (1976 [1925]) 4 affirms that attempts - erred attempts in his opinion - were made to unite Freudianism with dialectical materialism in the Russian and Western European bibliographies. More closely related to the Circle, Vassiliev (1995, p.10), Voloshinov's biographer, wrote that "The Russian intelligentsia at that time was overcome with a general Freudian fervor, which was reflected directly in the scientific interests of the Bakhtinian Circle."5 Among the members of the Circle who were interested in Freud, Vassiliev reports that Sollertinski taught a class about psychology in which special attention was dedicated to the works of Freud and to Pumpianski, who had prepared an article - Por uma crítica de Rank e da psicanálise [Criticism of Rank and Psychoanalysis].
Based on these data, obtained from the research carried out at the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg Branch (Sankt-Peterbúrgski Filial Arkhiva RAN), where some of Voloshinov's personal archive is found, and on bibliographic research, our objective is to recover the active type of dialogical relationships (discourse reflected/refracted by the other), in which "[a]nother's discourse in this case is not reproduced with a new intention, but it acts upon, influences, and in one way or another determines the author's discourse, while itself remaining outside it" (BAKHITIN,1984, p.195),6 among the two texts of Voloshinov previously cited, and the work of Freud, on the one hand, as well as the among the European and Soviet Marxists and Freudian theory, on the other. These controversial dialogical relationships can be explained by the Soviet academic context of the 1920s, of which the investigation of the scientific basis of Freudianism was a part, aiming to prove its compatibility or incompatibility with historical materialism. To show that diligence in researching Freudianism characterized the Soviet context of the time, we completed a search on writings and analysis of articles written by Soviet authors from the 1920s about this subject, and those that Voloshinov cited in the two previously mentioned texts. In addition, we conducted readings of Freud's works referred
1 The Open Controversy between the Sociological Method and Freudianism
The article Beyond the Social: On Freudianism 7 (Po tu stóronu sotsiálnogo. O freidizme) (1925), presents, in the second part of its title, an explicit mention of Freud's work and, in the first, an allusion to the text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Po tu stóronu printsípa udovólstviia)8 published by Freud in 1920 and translated [into Portuguese] in volume 14 of the Complete Works (Obras Completas -FREUD, 2010 [1920]) [in English] (FREUD, 1961a [1920]).9 In other words, while Freud investigates "beyond the pleasure principle," Voloshinov is investigating "beyond the social." Consequently, in the title we identify two types of dialogical relations between the works of the two thinkers: veiled by an allusion and revealed in the naming of the theory, which is the object of analysis. The word that returns as another word is not only the object of the sociological method of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov and the metalinguistics of Bakhtin, but also the way these theories are constituted, which is our focus. The analysis undertaken by Voloshinov about Freudianism is built on highlighting its merits and defects - a procedure that he repeats in his criticism of Saussure, the formalists, Vossler, etc. Thus, we begin with the defects.
Voloshinov (1976, [1925], pp.67-68) recriminates Freudianism for the lack of "dialogue" with the psychology of its time, or rather, for not trying to make
the slightest effort to elucidate precisely and concretely the Freudian position on contemporary psychology and its methods. [...] It became the habit of Freud and his students to quote only themselves and refer only to one another. In more recent times, they have begun quoting Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well.10
In our view, this criticism is unwarranted, since we can identify many references to psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, biologists, and sociologists in Freud's texts, which we will briefly elucidate here. At the beginning of the text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1961a),11 Freud sets up two pillars of reflection - the concepts of pleasure and unpleasure - the "quantity of excitation that is present in the mind [...] and to relate them in such a manner that unpleasure corresponds to an increase in the quantity of excitation and pleasure to a diminution" (1961a[1920], p.2; author's emphasis),12 and the principle of the "tendency towards stability" (1961a [1920], p.3),13 in which the psychic apparatus operates to maintain a low and constant level of excitement, articulated by the German philosopher and psychophysician, Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), considered the founder of the Psychophysics and Psychology as science. Fechner's psychophysical theory is based on a dual-monistic philosophy in which the mind and the body are two aspects of one reality: physical and psychological.
We find similar approaches in the following texts:
-
In Totem and Taboo (2001[1912-1913]),14 Freud developed his thesis about the intimate connection and the simultaneous origin between totemism and exogamy in dialogue - at times in accordance with, and, at others, opposed to - Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), founder of experimental psychology and scholar of the conscious. Along with Wundt, Freud developed his hypothesis by regularly citing anthropologists, biologists, ethnographers, philosophers, religious scholars, sociologists who were focused on this subject;
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In The Uncanny (1956-1974[1919]),15 Freud cites the German psychiatrist Ernst Anton Jentsch (1867-1919) as one of the few who worked on the variation from person to person of the susceptibility of the uncanny. Throughout the text, Freud cedes the dictionary definition of "uncanny," as well as its presence in works of art, to affirm that Jentsch's concept of the uncanny is an "intellectual uncertainty" (1956-1974, [1919] p.233)16 that does little to aid in comprehending it;
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In The Ego and the Id (1976a [1923]),17 Freud, based on the pioneering work of the German physiologist of psychosomatic medicine, Georg Groddeck (1866-1934), develops the concept of the Id - a part of the human psyche that passively leads us through unknown and uncontrollable forces;
-
In The Interpretation of Dreams (1955 [1900])18 - considered by Freud to be one of his most important works for presenting his work on hypnosis, as well as proof of the existence of the unconscious, on which point he had been attacked by his detractors - Freud dedicates the first 100 pages to a thorough review of the scientific literature on dreams, which preceded his, and which helped him formulate his thesis that "a dream is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish" (1955 [1900], p.183; author's emphasis);19
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In the first three chapters of Group psychology and analysis of the Ego (2010 [1921]),20 Freud summarizes and transcribes long fragments of the book Psychology of Crowds (LE BON, 2009),21 by the French sociologist and social psychologist Gustav Le Bon (1841- 1931). This is followed by a detailed analysis of the work of the English, social psychologist, William McDougall (1871-1938) The Group Mind (1920).22 In addition to these, Freud's bibliography comprises a long list of works by authors who deal with the psychology of groups.
Although he does not synthesize the psychology of his time, it is clear, from the list above, that Freud, in fact, does dialogue with the psychology of his contemporaries, although in a manner that differs from Voloshinov, Medvedev and Bakhtin: Freud tends to choose the interlocuters and concepts that establish dialogical relationships of affiliation and partial agreement, transforming them through his unique view of the human psyche, while the Circle opts for authors and theoretical lines with which to establish dialogical relationships of open controversy.
A second criticism is that Freudianism did not develop "effectively scientific methods in his theoretical approach" (VOLÓCHINOV, 1925, p.205)23 and, thus, continues to "operate with the old, subjective method of psychology that consists of self-observation [...] and its interpretation" (VOLÓCHINOV, 1925, p.205).24 In fact, Freud himself recognizes, without finding any problem in this, that the therapeutic task is comprised of three goals: the first is the art of interpretation, by the psychoanalyst, of the unconscious, which is hidden by the patient; the second aims "to oblige the patient to confirm the analyst's construction from his own memory" (FREUD, 1961a [1920], p.12);25 and in the third, as the patient cannot remember what is repressed in its entirety, the therapist leads the patient "to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience" in which these reproductions "are invariably acted out in the sphere of the transference, of the patient's relation to the physician" (FREUD, 1961a [1920], p.12).26
A third criticism was the accusation that Freudianism was "pansexualist," condemning the Freudian theory for reducing the explanation of all social, ideological and cultural phenomenon to the dynamics of sexual impulses. According to Voloshinov, this "pansexualism" is a manifestation of a bourgeois philosophy in reaction to its own decadence. Freud responded to this type of accusation made by other critics by, firstly, explaining that his view of sexuality diverged from the ordinary sense, such that it is: "divorced from its too close connection with the genitals and is regarded as a more comprehensive bodily function, having pleasure as its goal and only secondarily coming to serve the ends of reproduction" (FREUD, 1959 [1925], p.38).27. Secondly, in his text, A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis (FREUD, 1961b [1917], p.3609),28 Freud himself voiced this objection, since it had been previously and repeatedly voiced by Voloshinov:
Unintelligent opposition accuses us of one-sidedness in our estimate of the sexual instincts. 'Human beings have other interests besides sexual ones,' they say. We have not forgotten or denied this for a moment. Our one-sidedness is like that of the chemist, who traces all compounds back to the force of chemical attraction. He is not on that account denying the force of gravity; he leaves that to the physicist to deal with.29
A fourth critique is that, in Freud's theory, "there is not a single word in his theory about any of the material bases of character formation that are inherent in the constitution of the body or about the physical or objective social effects of the environment" (VOLOSHINOV, 1976 [1925], p.71).30 However, the consideration of the role of civilization and/or culture in the constitution of the human psyche would be developed in a more explicit way in one of Freud's most well-known texts Civilization and its Discontents (1962b [1930]).31 Since they were published three years after Freudianism (1927), Freud's considerations could not have been commented on in the two texts by Voloshinov, and it no longer constituted an object of Voloshinov's critical analysis, who may have not had access to Freud's work for personal reasons regarding institutional restrictions or even loss of interest, and therefore, the controversy was considered resolved.
Freud conceives civilization as "the whole sum of the achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes -namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations" (FREUD, 1962 [1930], p.36).32 Reintroducing his previous discovery that the pleasure principle, or the search for happiness, governs the finality of life and that this finality is irreversible, permanently, and for various reasons, Freud concentrates on one of the obstacles of satisfying the pleasure principle: social relationships. The basic cement in the construction of social life, according to Freud, is the compulsion to work and the power of love. Work and love repress and modify the satisfaction of instinctual and aggressive impulses in benefit of the collective life of mankind. However, the civilizing forces (love and work) and the individual instincts are in constant conflict in the history of humanity. Economic needs tend to absorb and regulate sexuality and familial life, generating conflict and displeasure. Struggle and disputes are inherent to human activity, and here Freud makes explicit mention to the Communists, for whom the elimination of private property would be on the basis of the elimination of the conflicts, injustices and antagonisms within humankind. Freud recognizes that "a real change in the relations of human beings to possessions" (1962 [1930], p.90)33 is capable of rewarding the virtue and improve life, but without yielding to an idealistic vision of human nature, as the economic structure is just one of the spheres of the existence of privileges and inequalities, and it would not eliminate the other conflicts of mankind, for example, the privilege in the realm of sexual relations or the unjust distribution of intellectual talents and physical aptitudes endowed by nature.
Freud continues his essay arguing that the struggle between Eros and death, life instincts and destructive ones, constitute the vital struggle of the human species in the construction of culture and civilization. In this process, the force of the social sphere exerts its influence both on the external coercions and the internalizations of the social ideas in the Super-ego that lives in constant conflict with the Ego.
In New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933),34 Freud explicitly analyzes
the theory of Karl Marx on the following points: firstly, Freud does not appreciate the historical conception of Marx about the origin of the social classes, but rather conceives the phylogenesis of human society as the conjunction of psychological factors of social groups and the dominion of nature (weapons, metals, the conquest of space, etc.); in suit, Freud recognizes that the force of Marxism is:
in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions [...] But it cannot be assumed that the economic motives are the only ones which determine human behavior of men in society. The unquestionable fact different that individuals, races and nations behave differently under the same economic conditions, in itself proves that the economic factor cannot be the sole determinant (FREUD, 1933, p.244).35
Freud continues arguing that the psychological factors originate from the economic relationships, as follows: the self-preservation instinct, aggression, the need for love, the impulse to obtain pleasure and avoid pain, the conservative demands of the Super-Ego, the evolution of culture and scientific empowerment. These last two factors clearly approach the transformative influence of the spheres of superstructure on economic relationships in the infrastructure. Finally, Freud denounced that practical Marxism lost its scientific and critical character and was redesigned with procedures characteristic of religion, such as the rejection and persecution of critics, and the dislocation of the destructive tendencies of man
for the "hostility of the poor against the rich" (FREUD, 1933, p.246).36 Freud's final evaluation is that Marxist theory would have to be conjugated and complemented with the explanation of the instinctual human compliance, its racial variations and its cultural transformations about the conditions of social ordering, from professional activities and the means of subsistence.
In this brief exposition, I hope to have made it clear that Freud was not indifferent to the individual. Nor does it seem to me incompatible with the concept of a socio- ideologically constituted subject and a society motivated by the contradiction and the struggle of economic interests. The dispute between the different groups and social classes for hegemony in the production and control of ideological signs that, in its turn, provide the material and the content of the human consciousness would be a dimension and would coexist with the interior struggle of individuals between the satisfying of their desires and the demands of the social realm, between the aggressive forces of death and the collective power of Eros.
One concept that is not the target of Voloshinov's criticism, but that, in our view, is important to understanding the controversy between Freudianism and the sociological method is the human conscience. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle,37 consciousness is conceived as a function of the psychic processes that, in anatomical terms, is located "in the cerebral cortex -the outermost, enveloping layer of the central organ" (FREUD, 1961a [1920], p.18),38 and "extend into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as certain of their characteristics give rise to feelings in the pleasure-unpleasure series" (FREUD, 1961a [1920], p.23),39 these coming from the inside of the apparatus of the psyche. The conscious does not leave traces of memory - it empties in the very process of excitation and possesses a mode of work governed by the categories of time and space, which Freud refers to directly in the work of Kant.
Following his theory begun in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1961a [1920]),40 Freud developed a relation between language and the human psyche in The Ego and the Id (1976a [1923]),41 where part of the basic premise of psychoanalysis was the differentiation between the conscious and the unconscious in the psyche. After this affirmation, Freud anticipates the reaction of a part of his readers, those with philosophical culture42 for whom the idea that something psychic that is not also conscious would be absurd, to argue that the phenomena of hypnosis and dreams are the actual proof of the existence of the unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious cannot manifest because of the acting forces of repression and resistance. The unconscious "is carried out on some material which remains unknown" (FREUD, 1976a [1923], p.12)43 and passes through the pre-conscious44 by means of the link with verbal representations.
The conscious is a quality of the psyche and can be characterized as: formed by "all perceptions which are received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within - what we call sensations and feelings..." (FREUD, 1976b [1923], p.3954);45 these sensorial perceptions and inner feelings link to the verbal acoustic and visual perceptions, which are older, ontogenetically and phylogenetically. The theory of dreams is based on the verification that: "Dreams, then, think predominantly in visual images-but not exclusively. They make use of auditory images as well, and, to a lesser extent, of impressions belonging to the other senses" (1955 [1900], p.79).46 Later in the work, Freud's point of departure is the affirmations by Schleiermacher and Strümpel: "The waking mind
produces ideas and thoughts in verbal images and in speech; but in dreams it does so in true sensory images" (1955 [1900], p.80).47
Under the influence of Humboldt, Ptiebnia, Cassirer and Chapet, on the one hand, and of the Russian Marxists, on the other, Voloshinov in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language,48 conceives that the conscious is born and exists embodied in the word, which is formed by the self-conscious and attributed to it, as conceptual stability. This does not mean that thought only exists after the advent of verbal language, but that thought was transformed qualitatively through the encounter with verbal language, and also visual, musical, architectonic languages, etc. In the individual as a historical and social subject, it is possible to distinguish the "life of the self," close to the physiological reaction of an animal - and the "collective life" - which has an ideological differentiation that guarantees firmness/certitude to the conscious. However, here we see that, on the one hand, language is the forming element of the human conscious both for Voloshinov and Freud, and, on the other hand, that Voloshinov focuses on the human conscious, while Freud theorizes the existence of an extra-verbal dimension - the unconscious in constant tension with the conscious. The division of the human psyche for Voloshinov corresponds to the perception of the complexity of the psychic apparatus that exists in a state of tension between subjective and objective forces. This perception occurs, in our view, as a result of the dialogue with Freudianism, which signals the departure point of our investigation into the merits, according to Voloshinov's analysis.
The first of these is that "Freudianism, in many cases, operates with the real greatness of human behavior and, in practice, knows how to advise within it" (FREUD, 2010 [1920], p.205),49 however Freudianism deals with real phenomena and knows how to operate with it. The second is that it brings a new understanding of the psychic phenomenon: "What is new is the grandiose metaphoric conception of the dynamic of the psyche, through which we find, in the majority of cases, the dynamic material of the somatic processes yet to be studied by science" (FREUD, 2010 [1920], p.205).50 Voloshinov recognizes the Freudian contribution to the understanding of the complexity of the human psyche, but condemns, then, its lack of the development of the scientific method.
The last aspect to be analyzed is that in the criticism of Freudianism, the first steps at developing the sociological methods are taken, and these are further developed later in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1973).51 The psychoanalysis session is submitted to the sociological method in the following excerpt from the 1925 article:
We bear in mind the complex relationships between the medical psychiatrist and the neurotic patient, that is, this small social world, with its specific conflicts, with a tendency of the patients to hide some aspects of their lives from the doctor, to fool him, to persist in their symptoms and so forth. This small social phenomenon is very complex. The economic base, the physiological aspect and the bourgeois ideological aspect (moral and aesthetic), all of this determines the concrete interrelation in its totality (VOLÓCHINOV, 1925, p.208).52
We surmise from this that the psychoanalytic session is a small social act that produces utterances and ideological signs that can only be understood in relation to the closest social participants, the closest social situation and the broad social horizon. Freud describes the session of psychoanalysis in different terms: "Analysis is not, however, suitable for polemic use; it always presupposes the consent of the one analyzed and the situation of a superior and subordinate" (1995 [1914], p.797).53 In other words, Freud is aware of the social and interpersonal dynamic of a psychoanalytic therapy session.
In the expanded version of the article published in 1927 - the book titled Freudianism: a Marxist Critique (1976),54 the sociological method was elaborated even further, such that it proposed even more substantial alternatives to Freudian concepts, through the valorization of the word or language, and the development of the concept of behavioral ideology:
At all stages of this route the human consciousness operates through words - that medium which is the most sensitive and at the same time the most complicated refraction of the socioeconomic governance (VOLOSHINOV, 1976 [1927], p.87).55
Let us call that inner and outward speech that permeates our behavior in all its aspects "behavioral ideology." This behavioral
ideology is in certain respects more sensitive, more responsive,
more excitable and livelier than an ideology that has undergone formulation and become "official" (VOLOSHINOV, 1976 [1927], p.88).56
Dream, myth, joke, witticism, and all the verbal components of the pathological formations reflect the struggle of various ideological
tendencies and trends that take shape within behavioral ideology
(VOLOSHINOV, 1976, [1927], p.88).57
Other levels, corresponding to Freud's unconscious, lie at a great distance from the stable system of the ruling ideology (VOLOSHINOV, 1976 [1927], p.89).58
I identify here that the concept of behavioral ideology was developed as an alternative proposal to the Freudian unconscious from the concept of Marxist social psychology. Voloshinov identifies it as one of the Freudian novelties - "the strife, the chaos, and the adversity of our psychical life" (VOLOSHINOV, 1976 [1927], p.75)59 - is reread from a dialectical materialist stance in which the ideological conflicts of social reality provide the content of the human psyche, generating conflicts and all their complexities. In this sense, our analysis corroborates Moura-Viera's (2009) conclusion that the tests about Freudianism do not constitute "a deviation from the decidedly linguistic
studies of the Circle" (p.69),60 but are "one of the pillars of the constitution of dialogic thought" (p.69).61
2 European and Soviet Marxist Dialogue with Freud
Valentín Voloshinov's interest in Freudian theory is not an isolated case in the Soviet context of the 1920s and reflects, in part, the rapid reception of Freud's work in pre- revolutionary Russia. Already in the 1910s, Freud declared that his work had achieved great recognition in Russia: "In Russia, psychoanalysis is very generally known and widespread; almost all my writings, as well as those of other advocates of analysis, are translated into Russian" (FREUD, 1995 [1914], p.786).62 Thus, by the second half of the 1920s, the work Freud produced until then had been translated and widely distributed for at least 11 years in Russia and later in the Soviet Union, which indicates the Soviet Marxist's interest in Freudianism.
In a footnote at the beginning of Beyond the Social: On Freudianism (1976 [1925])63 Voloshinov related 6 articles that treat relationships between historical materialism and Freudianism, not to mention others. The 5 first aimed to discuss Freudianism in relation to Dialectical Materialism- 1) A. B. Zalkind Freidizm i marksism [Freudianism and Marxism], Ótcherki kultury revoliúts. vriémeni [Sketches of culture in revolutionary times]; 2) B. Bykhóvski [O metodologuítcheskikh osnovániakh psikhoanalit. utchéniia Freida [On the methodological fundamentals of the psychoanalytic doctrine of Freud] (Pod známenem marksisma - N. 12, 1923); 3) K. D. Fridman Osnóvnye psikholog. vozzriéniia Freida i teóriia istor. mat-zma [Fundamentals of Freud's psychological perspective and the theory of Historical Materialism] ("Psychology and Marxism" - Psikhológuia i marksísm - organized by Kornílova); 4) A. R. Lúria Psikhoanáliz kak sistiéma monistích. psikhológuii [Psychoanalysis as a system of monist psychology] (Ibid.);
5) A. M. Reisner Freud i ego chkóla o relíguii [Freud and his school on religion] ("Petchát i Rev.", N. 2, 1924) - and the sixth takes up an open, controversial position on Freudianism that Voloshinov considers more correct: 6) - V. Iuriniéts. Freudizm i marksízm [Freudianism and Marxism] (journal, Pod známenem marksisma, N. 8-9, 1924).64
We begin wtih Iuriniets' text, which was the only one Voloshinov described as correct. Iuriniets' proposal was to investigate "from a purely critical position, the basis of Freud's theory" (1924, p.53)65 and, for this, the author repeatedly cites the texts Beyond the Pleasure Principle - the very text Voloshinov alludes to in his title - and The Ego and the Id. Freud's theory is characterized as a "philosophy of degradation" (p.65),66 "mystical spirit" (p.67)67 and an "unattainable fantasy world" (p.67).68 Iuriniets attacks, above all, the changes in the concept of the "unconscious" in the chronology of Freud's work and the supposed lack of definition of the "Id," which originates from, "a continuation and modernization of the German romantic philosophy of Schelling" (p.71).69 In the second part of the article, Iuriniets focuses on Freud's social psychology, in which, in our view, the Marxist aggression against Freud can be found: "Freudian sociology is the weakest part of the psychoanalytic system; it is simply a complete and colossal contradiction; besides this, it is the expression of a blind hate and rage in relation to Marxism" (1924, p.75).70 In addition to this critical synthesis, Iuriniets copies several statements against soviet Marxism that were written by Freud's disciples: "Communism is the expression of the tendency to join with the mother - the eternal nostalgia to return to the mother's womb" (1924, p.90);71 "The communist workers movement is an attempt to return to an infantile state" (1924, p.90);72 "Communism is neo-feudalism" (1924, p.91);73 "Marx's dialectic is an expression of paranoia that, together with the mystic belief in the role of the proletariat, acquires a form of religious paranoia" (1924, p91);74 and even, "The slogan 'workers of the world unite' is an expression of class homosexuality" (1924, p.92).75 Iuriniets criticisms seem to us less motivated by the possible insufficiencies of Freud's works than a reaction to the attacks by Freudians against Marxist theory and Soviet Marxism in general. Along these lines, Freud himself made some very well thought out criticism of Marxist theory and the Russian revolution, as he recognized, on the one hand, the possibility of greater social justice with the elimination of private property and, on the other, the astuteness of dialectical materialism as shining a light on the influence of economics on the way people think.
The other articles, on undertaking attempts to reconcile Freudianism with Marxism, are considered false or failed by Voloshinov: "we find profoundly false, Zalkind's central theoretical conviction, according to which the human psyche is a biological reflex of its social being" (BAKHTIN, 2001[1927], p.108);76 "The central failure of the article by Bykovskij can be summarized thus: absence of focus of the very psychoanalytic method as an objective fact" (BAKHTIN, 2001[1927], p.99).77 Among the five texts cited by Voloshinov as favorable to a reconciliation between Freudianism and Marxism,Fridman's (1925)78 article is the most consistent and extensive, which impels us to address it specifically as follows.
Fridman begins from the observation that the Freudian theory approaches man from two interrelated points of view - organic and social - and seeks to analyze the social basis for the psychic phenomenon, making it possible to analyze Freudian theory in light of the theory of historical materialism. After analyzing Freud's proposal about the organization and formation of the human psyche, Fridman concludes that the external conditions are the origin of the same inner impulses and, therefore, incompatible with dialectical materialism:
The rift between the unconscious and the conscious represents the hostility between the inner tendencies and outward conditions. The psychical apparatus, overall, is an area in which there is a shock between the internal and the external. However, the same inner impulses emerge dependent on reality and become concrete through it; the dynamic of the psyche reflects the struggle for the same external conditions within itself, of which some correspond to the remotest periods of human life, and, consequently, of its development, as well as others, in later periods (1925, p.141).79
At the end of the article, Fridman concentrates on a point-by-point comparison of the differences in aims, objects and methodology between Freudian theory and Historical Materialism, without considering the irreconcilable incompatibility or even the antagonism between the two theories; on the contrary: "The psychological presuppositions of both theories is the thesis that the source of our activities are the demands of life, the ultimate guiding force of development of the society of man" (1925, p.158).80 The following is a synthesis of Fridman's comparison.
Fridman's comparison shows that, in the Soviet Union from the first half of 1925 , part of the reception of Freud's work pointed to a possible articulation between the two theories, without reducing them in their specificities. This way of reading Freud links the possible articulation between the two theories, in my opinion, with the interpretation of
neo-marxists, such as Marcuse in Eros and civilization (1966 [1955]),81 who considers that "Individual psychology is thus in itself group psychology in so far as the individual itself still is in archaic identity with the species" (1966 [1955]), p.57),82 or rather, psychology describes the formation of the personality as the manifestation of the general repression of humanity, undermining the modern concept of the notion of the autonomous individual. Also, very similar to Fridman, Marcuse concludes that, in Freudian theory, the instinctive impulses are subject to historical modifications and, in this way, Freud's theory of civilization is an analysis of the mental mechanisms of the individuals that are the substance of history. The dynamics of the psyche described by Freud (the struggle between Eros and the death wish, of the edification and destruction of the culture, of the repression and return of the repressed) is freed and organized "by the historical conditions under which mankind develops" (1966 [1955]), p.108)83 and "the true spirit of psychoanalytic theory lives in the uncompromising efforts to reveal the antihumanistic forces behind the philosophy of productiveness" (1966 [1955], p.222).84 An important aspect of Marcuse's analysis is his lecture on Aristotelian Logos that unites ordered, classifying and domineering reason, to that which opposes it, and the concept of the essence of being in Freud, such as Eros, the logic of satisfaction and not domination, of culture as self- development and not repressive sublimation, of being rather than task doing, which works under a different principle of reality. Therefore, in Marcuse's work, Freudian theory shows the social-historical conditions of forming the human psyche in which the social and the individual are interrelated and constituted in a branch of criticizing and overcoming domination, repression - the renunciation that constitutes the modern individual and, consequently, sustains civilization.
Althusser was another intellectual that theorized about the relation between Marx and Freud, but from a very different point of view than Marcuse. Freud's texts, such as Totem and taboo85 and Civilization and its discontents86 are important fundamental texts in Marcuse's interpretation, while Althusser characterizes them as "adventurous and open to criticism" (1991[1976], p.86).87 For Althusser, Freud and Marx begin with previously known phenomena - the effects of the class struggle and the effects of the unconscious - and therefore, did not invent new objects; what they created was "the definition of their object, its limits and extension in the characterization of its conditions, in its forms of existence and its effects [...], in short, its theory" (1991[1976], p.76).88 Freud and Marx do not identify with the identity of the object "Freud, who only knew of Marx, thought, as he did, his object (even though it had nothing in common with him)" (ALTHUSSER, 1991[1976], p 90),89 but "Marx and Freud approximate one another through materialism and the dialectic" (ALTHUSSER, 1991[1976], p.78).90
Soviet Marxists such as Bykhovski also affirm that dialectical materialism is the foundation of Freudianism and situates it closer to Marxism: "Psychoanalysis is a theory with traces of monism, materialism, and the dialectic, that is, with the methodological principles of dialectical materialism." (1923, p.169).91 This approximation is categorically rebutted by Voloshinov: "Some consider Freud a materialist. Similar affirmations are based on a total misconception" (1925, p.205).92
Finally, Althusser describes the condition of the production of the Marxist and Freudian theories as the necessary conflicting reality in which both were generated - a class stratified society and a divided structure, and in conflict with the psychoanalytic subject --, both question the core of the philosophical form of the bourgeois ideology (the ideology of the single and conscious subject, necessary for accepting its own subjugation to bourgeois ideology).
Both Marcuse and Althusser point out that Freud's theory was modified by revisionists who annulled his discoveries and its transformative character, but differ considerably in their approaches: Marcuse seeks to show the influence of social and historical reality in the constitution of the human psyche, while Althusser emphasizes the difference of the objects in Marxist and Psychoanalytic theories, even though they meet on a common epistemological base in dialectical materialism. According to what has been presented, both approaches have been proposed by Soviet Marxists, such as Fridman and Byhovski in the first half of the 1920s and were refuted by Voloshinov.
Final Considerations
The study of Freud's works, based on Voloshinov's texts on Freudianism, as well as texts by Soviet Marxists at the beginning of the 1920s and European Marxists from 1950- 1970, provides us with a relatively broad understanding of the debate between Marxism and Freudianism. With regard to Voloshinov, his controversial dialogue with Freudianism sparked the initial developments of the sociological method, hence the development of the concept of quotidian ideology from the social situation and the life experience of the I/we (individual/collective) (these stemming from the German philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey). Although Voloshinov's sociological method admits the existence of the verbal and non- verbal ideological signs constituting human consciousness, his focus in the dialogue, in the discursive interaction and in the utterance lead him to form a theory of language strongly anchored in the ideological constitution of human consciousness.
The proposals of various authors in joining Freudiansim with Marxism, formed in distinct ideological and socio-historical conditions, indicate, in our view, that there are affinities among the two theories. Voloshinov's accusations against Freudian theory seem to us conditioned on the institutional dogmatism of the second half of the 1920s in the Soviet Union in which Soviet Marxism had become hegemonic and an unquestionable truth in university and research institutions (ILIAZV), or, in Lima and Perini's terms, "the intuition in marking the ideological space dedicated to the political system in which the
Circle operates" (2009, p.81).93 According to what we have pointed out, we find much well-developed criticism of the theory of Marx and Engels, but, even so, these restrictions must have provoked their total rejection in the Soviet Union, from the second half of the 1920s, when Voloshinov wrote his two texts at the ILIAZV.
I believe that the socio-ideological concept of the conscious, developed in Voloshinov's work, would be enriched by the discoveries of the Freudian unconscious, which points to a subject that is not only divided by socioeconomic conflicts, by the dialectic of the self/other, by the presence of the other in the self, but by their biological, somatic, libidinal, familial and phylogenetic determiners. Two possibilities for this enrichment were proposed by Soviet and European Marxists: on the one hand, the psychic organization of the individual can be understood as determined by their socio-historical conditioning (MARCUSE, 1966;94 FRIDMAN, 1925); on the other hand, the study of the subject constituted socio-ideologically is seen as ONE appropriation of the individual in language situated beside others that may be approached from a psychoanalytic view point (ALTHUSSER, 2009; BYHOVSKI, 1923).
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