This paper aims at the discussion of the appropriations made by Adorno of the Freudian categories in order to introduce new questions about psychoanalysis and its relations with the theory of society, without the risks of “psychologizing” the social determinants or “sociologizing” the psychological determinants. We try to discuss the limitations mentioned by Adorno on Freudian concepts, especially when they are confronted with the historical trends of late capitalism. The reflections on the “anachronism” of psychoanalysis show how the object studied by Freud - the individual - has changed through the economic and social forces that expropriated the individual psychology, and point to the critical potential of the classical psychoanalysis to elucidate the subjective effects of the forms of socialization imposed by the operating mode of the technically administered societies.
Psychoanalysis; Critical theory; Formation; Individual