Alice R. Wexler

For whatever is his own is

well-concealed from the owner;

and of ail treasures, it is our

own that we dig up last

 Nietzsche

Since anarchism first attracted me, in large part because of its emphasis on the psychological dimensions of liberationespecially Emma Goldman's eloquent complaint that most radicals paid attention only to the "external tyrannies" while the "internal tyrants" remained unexamined and undefeated I was delighted to see a session in Venice entitled "Psychoanalysis and Society." The links between psychoanalysis and anarchism were tantalizing; Goldman herself had attended lectures by Freud, first as a nursing student in Vienna in 1896, and later in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she was present at the famous Clark lectures in 1909. The anarchist historian Max Netttau too, a fellow resident of Vienna, was familiar with Freud's writing, and even saw resonances between Freud's psychology of religion and that of Bakunin, Certainly Max Stirner's cranky, idiosyncratic critique of repression, which so annoyed Marx, anticipated some of the Nietzschean insights which Freud thought foreshadowed his own. Still, like most radicals, anarchists were suspicious of Freud and of psychoanalysis which had mostly become, in post-war America at least, a theory of conformity and a therapy for the rich. Yet, as Russell Jacobi has recently shown, some analysts were, in their origins, political radicals as well. The social conservatism of contemporary psychoanalysis was not the whole story. In 1968, especially, the Left began to rediscover (and reinvent) Freud. Perhaps influenced by both Marxists and feminists who, since the late Sixties, had sought to recapture a potentially subversive, revolutionary dimension in Freud's thought, some anarchists too have begun asking whether psychoanalytic theory might be usefully applied to anarchist ends.

This was the theme of "Psychoanaiysis and Society," a session organized by Roger Dadoun, professor of literature at Paris VIII, and literary editor of the journal, L'Arc- That the topic intrigued many people was shown by the expectedly large turn-out that crowded the small room. The gist of the session, as I understood it, was that psychoanalysisat least certain strands of psychoanalytic theorydid indeed offer useful insights to anarchists. Dadoun, a quick, ironic, energetic m^n with a flair for the dramatic, made this point persuasively. Anarchism lacks an adequate depth psychology, he said, and psychoanaiysis offers a method of confronting and working through certain issues important to anarchism, such as the sexual mechanisms of submission to and acceptance of authority, the attraction to death, the psychological mechanisms of state power. In a certain sense, suggested Dadoun, the basic project of anarchism is psychological; an anarchist can not pretend to love humanity unless he loves himself. 1 much of our aggression, destructiveness, hatred toward other people derived from self-hatred projected outward, then perhaps the central project of anarchism is that of loving oneself, of self-acceptance. This, according to Dadoun, was the belief of Fernand Pelloutier, in his view the greatest of the French anarchists.

While Dadoun criticized the elitism and hierarchical elements of psychoanalysis as it is generally practiced, which are wholly antithetical to anarchist values, he also noted resonances between anarchism and analysis. For example, the characteristic gesture of anarchism, he explained, was a gesture of rupture. Similarly, the gesture of Freud was one of rupture from the bourgeois, Germanic, Jewish and later medicai culture in which he was educated. Later, in his self-analysis, he also underwent a rupture from his own interior self. This was perhaps the most heroic rupture of all. Moreover, Dadoun added humorously, the move of the fetus to separate from the mother in birth is itself a gesture of rupture. "La fetus," he concluded, "c'est anarchiste!"

Dadoun also raised interesting questions about the ways in which Freud's interpretation of dreams "the insurrection of dreams"might provide an entry into a libertarian universe; he asked how the Freudian conception of sexuality might lay the basis for an anarchist analysis of sex. As he put it in his own (written) summary, psychoanalysis and anarchism share certain common objectives, including the constitution of the free individual (one who is internally as well as externally free), and the constitution of small groups "which would at the same time allow in-

stinctual outlets and foster resistance to diffferent forms of authority." In short, while not at all uncritical of the conservative strands of psychoanalysis, Dadoun provocatively sketched potential points of congruence between psychoanalytic theory and anarchist ends.

Another speaker, Mario Marrone, a scholarly-looking, soft-spoken Argentine psychoanalyst resident for many years in London, shared Dadoun's criticism of the psychoanalytic establishment which has too often simply served the rich. Like Dadoun, he emphasized the value of psychoanalysis as a theory for illuminating our tendencies to project mner demons  feelings of hate, anger, etc. onto external reality. He also stressed its value for deepening our understanding of the ways in which "the individual internalizes the normative aspects of the society in which he lives and how these normative aspects influence, on an unconscious level, his social behavior." Anarchists, he argued, must recapture the potentially revolutionary element in psychoanalysis, rediscover its potential as a theory offering new perspectives on social change. Anarchists should also make analytic therapy available to all who need it Marrone particularly emphasized the importance of the small groupthe anarchist social unit par excellence in psychoanalysis, both theoreticallyas the essential point of contact between the individual and society and practically, as the focus of therapy, i.e. group analysis. "In an age when 'mass society' is ever more standardized," he concluded, "the recover of the identity of the small group has an importance that cannot be played down. So group analysis appears as a useful means of acting in the interface between the individual and society, as part of a sustained effort to combat alienation."

There were other interesting contributions including those by Alain Thevenet, a therapist from Lyon, and by Jacques Guigou, a researcher from Grenoble. My limited French and a noisy, enthusiastic crowd prevented me from grasping the full import of these presentations. Significantly, no one here seemed to be arguing, as leftists often had, that all the evils were' outside ourselves, and that emancipation was simply a question of changing external conditions. No one seemed to be arguing against the existence of the unconscious or insisting that therapy itself was reactionary; that therapy for radicals should consist simply of throwing oneself into political work- Ellen Willis, a critic for the Village Voice whose work I admire greatly, had argued this point with other feminists in a wonderful, witty 1972 essay called, "The Fantasy of the Perfect-Lover."

(New York Review of Books, 31 August 1972) At the same time she eloquently explained why radicals needed the insight of analysis. At that time the prevailing feminist orthodoxy was deeply anti-Freudian and hostile to psychoanalysis, favoring a kind of feminist behaviorism. "Yes, of course," Willis wrote,

there is a real enemy out there. Nevertheless my own expert ence tells me that I do not live only in the present, that 1 don't always act in what i consciously perceive to be my self-interest, that my fears aren't always rational. I am the product not only of present conditions but of my own history, which is not exactly like anyone else's. 1 often fee! as if 1 am playing out scenarios that were written a long time ago. And though i understand very well that as a woman I am oppressed, not evil or inferior, understanding is one thing and feeling is another.

As outlined by Freud, said Willis, psychoanalysis "promises nothing less than an opportunity for human beings to recover their wholeness to exorcise their most profound terrors, to accept their bodies, to regain access to the full range of their emotions." Was this not what Emma Goldman had meant when she pleaded for a vision of emancipation that gave free reign to fantasy and sexuality, and when she defined anarchism as "a living influence to free us from inhibitions, internal no less than external, and from the destructive barriers that separate man from man''? True, Goldman was skeptical of the vogue of psychoanalysis as it had flourished in the Teens and Twenties; she dismissed it as "the new confessional," but her own vision of inner liberation had much in common with the Freudian project of freeing the individual from the domination of unconscious compulsions and obsessions.

if the presentations in Venice seemed to recapitulate arguments that had been made earlier by other feminists and socialists, i was impressed by the particular resonances between anarchism and analysis as they were discussed here, including the centraiity of the question of authority to both projects. Although psychoanalysis may argue against the more Utopian dimensions of anarchism, I came away from this session with the impression that psychoanalytic theory was potentially a powerful tool and weapon for anarchists in the struggle for a free society. Directed toward radical ends for example, uncovering the powerful un-

conscious sources of dependence on authority, demystifying the symbolic attractions of the state, unraveling the bonds of erotic dominationan anarchist psychoanalysis may open up creative new directions for anarchist practice, while also inventing new possibilities for psychoanalysis itself.