Dewan S Arefin Repression in Marx, Weber and Freud

Annotation

Sigmund Freud is widely known for his extra-ordinary contribution to the world of psychology, especially to the domain of psychoanalysis. But he is less known as a social theorist. His contribution in this area is quite extensive, important, and relevant for understanding of many social facts, including the delicate process of social change. His utterings are worthwhile, reasonable, and scientific to a great extent. Freud is not valuable only for his theoretical activities, but he is also inevitable for locating a better profile of human behavior, society, culture, and civilization. By exhibiting the fact that neither the unconscious was absolute, eternal, or unalterable nor the conscious, he emphasized the idea that the reality and psyche were interdependent. Social circumstances and psyche shaped and conditioned each other; neither could grow in isolation. Freud pointed out that there was a conflict within each individual and that was the fundamental feature of 'socialization' into every societyan unavoidable 'Repression', characterizing human life. Repression occupies a major area in Freudian literature, so does the idea of social distance. Social distance, according to Freud, is not only a biological entity, but also is a functional entity. Social distance, as is adhered to by the Marxian dialectical materialists as being the creation of private property and its disproportionate ownership, identified as a symbol of superiority in any such spheres as power, prestige, privilege, etc, is considered to be an inevitable phenomenon in human existence and its movement forward.