Initiation
à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes, published by Presses Universitaires de France (January 2014), is one of Althusser's most important works. The present article is Chapters 14 and 15 of the book. In these two chapters, Althusser outlined psychoanalytical practice and showed its difficulties. He also discussed the influences that the psychoanalytical practice had on the practice and theory of arts. For Althusser, the analysis produced prodigious effects in the ideology and the philosophy, which he described as a real "Copernican reversal." Before Freud, everything in the man is believed to work in his consciousness, and the essence of man is the consciousness. Freud imposed the truth that the consciousness was only a derived effect, and that the human consciousness "turned" around the unconscious. In the history of the ideas, this Freudian criticism of "the psychological man" is comparable only to the Marxist criticism of "the economic man" (the man defined by his economic needs). Althusser also discussed the profound effects that the psychoanalysis had on artistic practice and aesthetic theory. Aesthetic practice for Althusser is far from being a pure creation of beauty, but takes place under abstract social relationships, which are not only the standards that defines the beauty, but also the ideological relationships of class struggle. Arts, apart from the marvels of pleasure, can encourage an ideology of the purity, the beauty and the absolute autonomy, which is of use to the intellectuals as alibi of the dominating classes.
