A review of Florent Gabarron-Garcia, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis (London: Pluto Press, 2025).
“How can anyone still take the likes of Freud seriously?” This was part of a conversation I had with left-wing folks upon arriving in Sweden almost twenty years ago. To them, Freud – and psychoanalysis as a whole – seemed archaic, a misogynist hoax, rightfully thrown in the dustbin of history. While not everyone in Sweden may be this blunt, there really isn’t much space for discussing psychoanalysis, neither in mainstream society nor within the left. Science rules supreme, and psychoanalysis is regarded as hocus-pocus.
I’ve always remained unconvinced. I grew up in Austria where psychoanalysis is part and parcel of the country’s intellectual history. If a child in Sweden displays troubling behavior, people look for the most fitting neurodivergent category. In Austria, people inquire about the child’s upbringing, family life, and social environment. It’s a big difference.
On to the political plain: with an interest in radical politics, there is no escaping psychoanalysis on the European continent (which, colloquially, excludes Scandinavia and the British Isles). To explain fascism, you turn to Wilhelm Reich; to understand the Red Army Faction, you read up on the Socialist Patients Collective of Heidelberg; to find answers to the failed May 68 uprising in France, you study Jean-François Lyotard’s “libidinal economy” and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “schizoanalysis.” As if to confirm the continental relevance of psychoanalysis for radical politics, the very day I sat down to pen this review, I received the latest pamphlet compiled by a German comrade of mine, documenting a 1925 debate in the anarchist journal Die Aktion about “Antiauthoritarian Class Struggle and the Role of Psychoanalysis.”
Most of the individuals and groups mentioned above feature prominently in Florent Gabarron-Garcia’s A People’s History of Psychoanalysis. I was excited about receiving the book, and I would not be disappointed! Gabarron-Garcia skillfully boils down complex historical and intellectual matters and presents them in a digestible manner without oversimplifying things. The book includes some Freudology (“What did Freud really mean?”), but it’s within limits. Incomprehensible Lacanianisms are kept to a few pages only!
Wilhelm Reich, founder of the German Association for Proletarian Sexual Politics (Sexpol) and Communist Party member, serves as the hero of early psychoanalytic history in Gabarron-Garcia’s account, outshining both Freud himself, who, according to Gabarron-Garcia, went from politically progressive to opportunistic, and C.G. Jung, the “most repulsive figure in the orthodox history.” Gabarron-Garcia hasn’t much good to say about the current state of psychoanalysis either: “For decades, psychoanalysis has by and large been deeply and openly reactionary.” Tragically, Reich’s quest to understand how masses can abdicate all reason in order to follow the most cunning and manipulative leaders remains highly pertinent in the days of Trump II. (Just a couple of weeks ago, an American friend and I concluded that the US left really needs Reich study circles.)
The Socialist Patients Collective, which Félix Guattari once referred to as “the psychiatric equivalent of the Paris Commune in terms of proletarian struggles” (you’ll find the quote in the book), gets its own chapter in A People’s History of Psychoanalysis. The La Borde Clinic, in which Guattari was involved, also receives much attention. Personally, I was delighted about the extensive coverage of psychoanalysis in Red Vienna during the 1920s and 30s, with an excellent section about longtime psychoanalyst activist Marie Langer, who, forced into exile by fascism, joined the International Medical Brigade in the Spanish Revolution before moving on to Latin America. For Gabarron-Garcia, Langer “embodies the people’s history of psychoanalysis in her career and her stances.” There are also very interesting observations about the role of psychoanalysis in the early Soviet Union (killed off – no pun intended – by Stalin).
Albeit not a trained psychoanalyst, French-Caribbean psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon also makes appearances in the book. It is an important challenge to relate his work to the psychoanalytic tradition. I was surprised, though, to see the Frankfurt School relegated to one meager footnote. At a minimum, Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization would have deserved a page or two, not least because it was influential on Heidelberg’s Socialist Patients Collective. But that’s “complaining at a high level,” as we German speakers like to say.
In his conclusion, Gabarron-Garcia writes: “May this book contribute to opening new paths of research and encourage today’s – and tomorrow’s – militant analysts to engage in clinical work with the contemporary working classes.” Noble goals. For the book to live up to them, it needs to be read. I’d recommend anyone to do so!
Gabriel Kuhn
(August 31, 2025)