Impossibility of 'Auto-Critique' (was Re: Irony, or, the Importance of Being Earnest)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 18 09:38:31 PST 1999


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>Not at all. There is no such thing as 'auto-critique.' The Self cannot
>critique itself without falling into narcissism. Didn't Marx and Freud tell
>you that?

Well not exactly. Freud psychoanalyzed himself, which is a kind of critique, no? Not that he succeeded, or that a psychoanalysis ever succeeds. But without some allowance for self-critique, we'd all be completely, inescapably creatures of our personal histories and social positions. Engels would have been a capitalist pig and not Marx's collaborator and patron.

And one theory of narcissism (it's been too many years, but I think it was Kohut's) involves a fusion of all the psychic subpopulations (ego and ego-ideal) into a pathological whole, with no observing superego doing its critical bit.

Doug



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