Drive Materialism. The Freudian Reading of Nietzsche: Notes for a Critique of Libidinal Economy

Abstract

This paper aims to point out the relevance of Psychoanalysis for an emancipatory interpretation of Nietzsche’s work. Our hypothesis is that a Freudian interpretation of Nietzsche –more or less explicit in Freud’s thought–
made possible a critical use of his work. That interpretation allows us to remove the Nietzsche’s aristocratic, slave, political program, without discarding his most relevant contributions. In addition, it allowed us to revalue topics that had been unjustly relegated from a perspective that favored the economy among other human dimensions.
For various epistemological, moral and political reasons, the fertile convergence of Marxism and Psychoanalysis overshadowed the relationships between Nietzsche and Freud, both of them critics of religion and morality. A wide range of problems of social theory can be redefined –and not only improved– under their perspective. In this paper we propose to interpret key aspects of  Nietzsche’s genealogy of moral through the Freudian understanding of resentment and of neurosis of civilization.