| Abstract: | Applied to the interpretation of social phenomena, Freud's insights have been at once extraordinarily fruitful yet susceptible to oversimplification and pejorative stereotyping. A number of his fundamental concepts–the existence of an irrational mass mind, the Oedipal family constellation, the pathology of psychic regression–have, when used to understand collective experience, created powerful myths. Only gradually did he and his successors modify and amplify these myths, resulting in the elaboration of ego psychology and the concept of identity. These concepts connected psychoanalysis with contemporary social, political, and historical thought and allowed more nuanced forms of explanations. |
