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Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia
Five Lectures Psychoanalysis Politics and Utopia Author:Herbert Marcuse Back Cover reads: — This forceful and compact book summarizes the ideas that have brought to Herbert Marcuse his international reputation as one of the most perceptive analysts of advanced industrial society and made him a leading influence on the New Left. Originally delivered to student and scholarly audiences in New York, Frankfurt, and Berlin... more », these lectures deal with the forces of repression that our society continues to generate at the very point in time when it has developed the means for creating a non-repressive society.
Beginning with three lectures on Freud, Marcuse examines the concepts of freedom and of progress in Freud's thought, and advances the radical thesis that the individual as seen by Freud no longer exists. Those who live in advanced industrial societies no longer develop the autonomy, rationality, and conscience that Freud considered the prerequisite of a healthy person. In the two concluding lectures on contemporary society, he urges a break with today's conception of "progress": and presents a brief assessment of the current political situation with a view to determining the forces that could bring about a change.
Herbert Marcuse, professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of Eros and Civilization, One-Dimensional Man, and An Essay on Liberation, all published by Beacon Press. Five Lectures is the first publication in English of the German volumes The End of Utopia and Psychoanalysis and Politics« less