Erik Berggren

'Engineer of the Psyche : Myrdal's Freudian Liberalism in An American Dilemma'

This essay seeks the political argument in An American Dilemma through a close reading of the chapters where Myrdal, in his social engineering effort, combined a rudimentary psychoanalytic view of racism with a strong normative support of an Americanist interpretation of Liberalism, expressed through the notion of the American Creed. Central issues are the construction of the self in Myrdals text, and its relation to a real and imagined social order. The ambiguity of the status of the Creed as both liberal norm and “imperative reality” for the psychoanalytic perspective will be critically discussed.