Publication Details

Abstract

Although psychoanalysis is losing its influence in diagnostic and clinical practice and is often marginalized, it remains influential in psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and the humanities. Toward the end of his career, Sigmund Freud moved from clinical practice to a philosophical diagnosis of culture and predicted that in the future someone would decide to venture into the pathology of cultural communities. The paper, focusing on the possibilities of applying psychoanalytic approaches to cultural phenomena, is based on Freud’s assumption that all cultural reality is constructed by the psyche of individuals, and that is why culture can be analysed and diagnosed as human consciousness and unconsciousness. The text focuses on the issue of symbols and symbolism and their direct and massive transfer of notions and concepts, which originate in individual psychology, to the field of mass psychology, that is, to a vast territory including society, culture, civilization, and the masses.