Writing at the height of the structuralist period in France, Goux developed a theory of symbolic economies in which the structure of the Freudian subject mirrors the forms of value and exchange that dominate capitalist society. This perspective enables psychoanalysis to be understood not as a timeless science of the psyche, but as a historically embedded model of subjectivity — shaped by the forms of rationality that define modern capitalist modernity.
Goux was an influential figure in the 1970s. Thinkers as diverse as Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Lacan acknowledged his impact. Yet paradoxically, Goux has become a relatively marginal figure today, particularly within Marxist approaches to psychoanalysis. This marginalization is itself striking, given that his work directly engages with the economic unconscious — an area of renewed relevance.
👉 Read the whole piece at the “Economic Unconscious Laboratory” website :
🔗 https://www.eulaboratory.com/freud-and-symbolic-economy
