The Psychological Bases of the New Utopias: A Study in Personality and Politics

FAIN: RO-10483-70

Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (Project Director: February 1970 to present)

Study of the psychological bases of the Utopian political thought of Wilhelm Reich, Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Fanon. ABSTRACT: Study of the psychological bases of the Utopian political thought of Wilhelm Reich, Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Fanon. Every social philosophy rest on a conception of human nature and most assume of state a theory of personality. From the Republic to One Dimensional Man, Utopian thought has involved its authors in the limits and means of restructuring human personality. Freud's conviction that civilization (which he valued) was grounded in repression appears incompativle with Utopian hopes of eliminating conflict within and between men through social engineering. While grounded Freudian psychiatry, the neo-Freudian writers have also borrowed from the Enlightenment and Karl Marx, to produce new theories of human perfectibility. PI traces the mutations in personality theory from Freud to the new utopians-from repression to freedom, conformity to creativity, order to violence, authority to equality, achievement and work to joy and play. Funds for salaries (PI and research assistants), research materials, travel (to interview authors)