DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12390 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Psychoanalysis and critical theory: A new quarrel about revisionism? Duarte Rolo Université Paris Descartes – Centre Henri Piéron, UFR Institut de Psychologie, Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex, France Correspondence Duarte Rolo, Université Paris Descartes – Centre Henri Piéron, UFR Institut de Psychologie, 71, avenue Edouard Vaillant, 92774 Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex, France. Email: duarte.rolo@parisdescartes.fr 1 INTRODUCTION The relation between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory has constantly evolved. Horkheimer, for instance, once considered psychoanalysis as one of the most important parts of the multidisciplinary materialism he wished to establish. In the following generations of the Frankfurt School, however, psychoanalysis has endured contrasting fortunes. 1 Recently, Honneth has staunchly advocated a new alliance between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. According to Honneth, however, this union should take into account the latest developments in psychoanalysis, on the one hand; and, on the other and, consider the author's own contribution to the field of Critical Theory, namely his model of the struggle for recognition. Honneth's plea in favor of psychoanalysis is thus doubled by a reconstruction of the Freudian presuppositions upon which his Frankfurt school elders reasoned. The clearly stated choice for a revised version of the Freudian theory—as it happens, the theory of object relations—and for an intersubjectivist approach has nonetheless earned him some criticisms, notably from American psychoanalyst Joel Whitebook. Exchanges between the two authors (Honneth, 1999, 2007, 2012a; Honneth & Whitebook, 2016; Whitebook, 2001) have taken the form of a real controversy in which different psychoanalytic concepts are contrasted and evaluated in the light of their capacity to explain irrational motives and the antisocial nature of human behavior. This debate renewed the interest for psychoanalysis among social theoreticians, a subject that had fallen somewhat out of favor during the Habermas era and the boom years of the cognitive revolution. One of the major interests of this quarrel is that it shed light on the divergences existing between multiple psychoanalytic orientations. Indeed, nowadays psychoanalysis is anything but a homogeneous and unified discipline. 2 Behind an apparent fam- ily resemblance fundamental dissensions punctuate the different psychoanalytic paradigms, which now refer to very distinct conceptions of the unconscious (Heenen-Wolff, Philippot, & Broeck, 2007; Tessier, 2014); which do not agree on the role to be played by drives and sexuality (Heenen-Wolff, 2008; Honneth, 2007; McIvor, 2015a; Tessier, 2014); which conceive differently the forces at play in psychic conflict and the formation of symptoms and, therefore, which differ on the methods and objectives of the psychoanalytic cure (Heenen-Wolff, 2013). The different tendencies exist- ing today within psychoanalysis, while using a similar vocabulary, often espouse distant and sometimes contradictory theses on the functioning of the psychic apparatus. This myriad of approaches considerably complicates the philosopher's task insofar as she aims to found a project of social criticism on a psychoanalytic basis. As Honneth (2007) correctly points out, the alliance between Critical The- ory and psychoanalysis is not self-justified, and it would be rash to set it solely upon a historical affinity. The question Constellations. 2018;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cons c  2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1