Letters

Abstract

11111MBLE Base and Superstructure Editors: I much appreciated Ellen Willis's review of my book Secrets of the Soul (Winter 2005), but there was one assertion to which I need to respond. Willis writes, "In effect , Zaretsky the historical materialist defines psychoanalysis as the ideological superstructure erected on the material base of the second industrial revolution." This is inaccurate. In fact, I argued that psychoanalysis had an affinity, not with capitalism but with the spirit—the psychology and culture—of twentieth-century mass consumption . Far from being a "materialist," I argued that twentieth-century men and women did not become consumers in order to supply markets; rather they sought freedom from familial compulsions, from instinctual restraints , and from what Weber called the Protestant ethic" on behalf of new ideals of personal life. As a charismatic movement, psychoanalysis supplied the theory and practice for such ideals. Psychoanalysis therefore served as a catalyst for the broad cultural revolution- ,`modernism"—that accompanied mass consumption. Not only is this idea wholly different from that of a superstructure ; it helps to explain why the latter idea became obsolete. ELI ZARETSKY Berlin, Germany DISSENT / Summer 2005 n 127 ...