Liberation and its limits

"To take Freud and psychoanalysis seriously is to conclude that much of what passes for liberation in contemporary society is empty- individualism run riot, as it were. Psychoanalysis is in fact one of the gravest moral indictments our culture has known. This was true of the judgment Freud levied against his own supposedly repressive culture. But it is true also about the judgment psychoanalysis demands of our own sexual 'liberation.'" A provocative reappraisal of psychoanalysis and its moral and political implications. This book argues that Freud powerfully set forth the limits to the freedom we can achieve merely by "living out" desire- or, indeed, as isolated individuals at all. Jeffrey Abramson demonstrates that the Freudian path to self-realization leads outside the self to involvement with others and immersion in human affairs. It demands we return to the therapy of community, thus restoring the enriching connection between personal and political liberation. The freedom Abramson uncovers through Freud is a freedom in which the self must reconcile reason with desire, creating its own identity and moving toward "the richer civic aspects of personal character- the virtues of fellow-feeling and friendship, of citizenship and allegiance to a common good."