free association revisited

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Notes

Roy Sellars English Programme Department of English and Danish University of Southern Denmark Engstien 1 DK‐6000 Kolding Denmark E‐mail: [email protected]

Lukács' famous gibe is found in the 1962 Preface to his Theory of the Novel: “A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have taken up residence in the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ [‘ Grand Hotel Abgrund’] …” (22; Theorie des Romans16). See Jarvis 188. The English translation of the Preface has been posted at ⟨http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/theory‐novel/preface.htm⟩.

Freud seems to use Assoziationen and Einfälle, both translated “associations” in the Standard Edition, interchangeably. An Einfall, literally a “falling‐in,” is a notion that occurs to one, and the corresponding verb einfallen thus takes the dative. It is a kind of thought, but only to the extent that it strikes one – one does not consciously think it. Einfall, for Freud, is then always already Assoziation. Patrick Mahony gives a useful account of the terms (21–22); and for the dogmatics of the method, see Anton Kris.

Adorno emphasises this point at length in his defence of speculative obscurity, “Skoteinos.”

One notable exception is Yvonne Sherratt, who divides the Prelude to her lucid Adorno's Positive Dialectic into two halves, introducing “Adorno's Intellectual Tradition,” namely “German Philosophy” (24–49) and “Sigmund Freud” (50–69). She overstates her case, but provides a valuable dialectical corrective to Lukács' location of Adorno, who evidently does not reside at Grand Hotel Abyss after all.

Among the many readings of Minima Moralia to which I am indebted, that by Thomas Pepper (“Guilt by [Un]Free Association”) springs particularly to mind.

For the sake of simplicity, I have resisted the temptation to modify and retranslate quoted translations, but here the English gives “brutality,” which is clearly a brutal and banal misprint.

For “the philosophy of revelation,” see Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung. I have so far failed, however, in my quest to find out about Adorno's mother‐in‐law, Amalie or Amilie Karplus; his voluminous, indeed encyclopedic, biographer Müller‐Doohm gives the former spelling in his text (87) and the latter in his index, but otherwise has almost nothing to say about her. (A translation of his book is forthcoming from Polity.)

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roy sellars

Roy Sellars English Programme Department of English and Danish University of Southern Denmark Engstien 1 DK‐6000 Kolding Denmark E‐mail: [email protected]