188 Christopher R. Bell
cost of the freedom of people. Human beings end up reduced to the
condition of slaves of liberated commodities and of the capitalist system
that ironically regulates their liberty. In such circumstances, women can
only recover a certain “freedom”, which is obviously not freedom in the
strict and classic sense of the term, through a hysteria that opens the way
to what the system cannot regulate. This logically appears as a gesture of
subversion and revolt.Pavón-Cuéllar and Orozco Guzmán (2017) thus emphasize that what is
effectively repressed during Freud’s time concerns the ability of many,
notably women and racial or ethnic minorities, to become full participants
and beneficiaries in the discourse of economic liberalism available
principally to a certain class of men, leading to situations of social
exclusion or dependence which inevitably impacted their sexual expression
and sexual freedom/autonomy. As Pavón-Cuéllar further emphasizes,
being a full participant in the discourse of economic liberalism as a
producer of goods or services is no guarantee of personal freedom—even
those most successful become bonded to an economic system that,
“regulates their liberty” (p. 3).
When Freud’s theory of neurosis caused by sexual repression is seen in
light of this broader social and economic context of late 19th century
Vienna, it becomes less compelling as a universally applicable theory of
the human psyche and/or the dynamics of personality tout court, and more
compelling as a theory describing the psychological repercussions of
particular social conditions. Thus, if Freud’s theory of neurosis remains
applicable today, within certain cultural contexts, it is arguably because
these contexts involve similar if not even more pronounced social
contradictions to the ones existing in Freud’s own culture. In addition,
Freud’s vision of psychoanalysis did not involve fundamentally rocking
the boat of economic liberalism but at best encouraged becoming a fuller
participant within this existing social-economic arrangement. This
conformist social stance was particularly evident in the variant of
psychoanalysis known as Ego-Psychology, the dominant form of
psychoanalysis in the United States during the 1940’s and ‘50’s, which
encouraged identification with the ‘healthy and strong’ ego of the