Abstract

Psychoanalysis sets out to solve the riddles and enigmas of the psyche. For Adorno, however, psychoanalysis itself is an enigma. Why, he asks, have both the theory and its therapeutic applications become entangled in insoluble contradictions? Adorno identifies to a certain extent with the great psychoanalytic riddle-solvers, Freud and Ferenczi, as he probes these contradictions. He hopes, however, to move beyond the limits of a theory that reduces all phenomena to psychological factors, so he also approaches the problem as a sociologist. This perspective enables him to describe the static and dynamic aspects of the social structure within which psychoanalysis developed in the first half of the 20th century. And it frees him, furthermore, from the misconception that Freud passed on to most of his followers: the belief that they were pursuing a natural science of the soul, which would generate its own rigorously scientific psychological technique.