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Introduction
Freud's programmatic claim that psychoanalysis can analyze individuals and society in general by using the same metapsychological concepts has not been widely accepted (Freud, 1920, p. 69). Freud's claim is perhaps so unpopular because it implies that psychoanalysis is in possession of what I'd like to call an ontological account of the subject, that is, a theory of the fundamental nature of subjectivity. 1 Such an ontological theory gives rise to accounts of both individual and social development. Such a wide-ranging account seems to be at odds with Freud's other claim for the discipline, namely that psychoanalysis is a branch of biology and so must proceed piecemeal (Freud, 1921, pp. 56-58).
In claiming for psychoanalysis an ontological account of subjectivity, however, Freud draws on a long tradition in philosophy - from Plato to Hegel - in which the ontological account gives rise to a dialectic between the individual and societal account of subjectivity that spring from it. Given their common origin, the individual and societal accounts are understood to form the basis for the critique both of the individual and of society. Indeed, only by being able to give such a two-pronged account can one make sense of the tension between individual and society and so make normative claims about certain types of behavior, either on the part of individuals or on the part of social mores.
While Freud made limited use of dialectical tension between the two sides of his theory to point out injustice, others have certainly done so. One thinks here of members of the Frankfurt School, in particular of Herbert Marcuse, though also of the work of Wilhelm Reich and others who sought to integrate socialism and psychoanalysis. Of these, few, however, have employed the two sides of Freud's theory to criticize both psychological and social failings. Most have tended to criticize social pathology on the model of individual pathology (see, for instance, Layton, 2014). Frantz Fanon was a notable exception, being someone who made wide use of Freud's theory in both these respects.
Fanon's critique of colonial society depends on the dialectical critique of both individual and social pathology in the sense that individual pathology is seen as the result of social pathology and vice versa. This claim...