The freudian legacy in the dialectics of enlightenment: the importance of memory on the ontogenetic and phylogenetic planes

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate in which ways Freud's statements about the relationship between ontogenetic and phylogenetic plans were carried out by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. To do this, it was necessary to rebuild many of the arguments of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, emphasizing the importance of memory in that book. This reconstruction was supported by Freudian concepts related to memory (repeat, repression, and working-through), because the psychoanalysis is one of the theoretical influences of the Frankfurt School writings. The findings indicate the conformation of phylogenetic background on the ontogenetic level, in specially in what it refers to the formation of what is concerned ioth of which undergo similar processes with regard to the formation of the Ego. The memory appears in Freud and Adorno and Horkheimer, correspondingly, as repeat - repression- elaborationg, as the three structures of Ego.