06/03/2026
Staff Pick - Political Freud: A History by Eli Zaretsky Freud added new dimensions to our conception of the individual in many different fields of human life. Psychoanalysis played a crucial in bringing about changes in capitalism as it marked the birth of the “mass consumer,” driven by internal desires and the concept of “personal life.” Freudian thought also added the language of psychic trauma to the experience of racial oppression and the brutality of total war as seen in World War I, when ideals of martyrdom and self-sacrifice began to come into question.
