The purpose of the text is to present an interpretation of Theodor Adorno’s critical reading of authors considered revisionists of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, particularly Karen Horney. We discuss critically Adorno’s favorable positioning to the Freudian conception of the individual psychic nucleus in contrast to the hasty sociologization of psychoanalysis practiced by the revisionism of Karen Horney. In the final part we try to show how the Adornian perspective ends up by making, in his own way, the same mistake of (...) a hasty sociologization of psychoanalysis he imputed to the revisionists and advocates an theoretical emphasis on the sociological realm that seems also problematic. (shrink)

The collapse of the Weimar Republic remains central to the history of the 20th century and to contemporary debates on 'classical modernity' and its Europe-wide crisis in the wake of the First World War. The present issue of Thesis Eleven focuses on three dimensions of the Weimar crisis: the experience of fundamental societal crisis and closure and its diagnostic power in relation to the rise of fascist movements; the cognitive and normative resources that sought to work against this crisis-ridden sense (...) of closure; and third, the degree to which these counter tendencies anticipate postmodern interrogations of the premises of classical modernity. (shrink)