Project of Concrete Psychology and Existential Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In the text Critique of the Foundations of Psychology (1928) Georges Politzer (1903-1942) sought to investigate the epistemological bases of some currents of psychology. His intention was to reorient psychological studies toward a concrete
conception. By analyzing Gestalt theory, Behaviorism, and Psychoanalysis, Politzer outlined a project of concrete psychology with some principles that guide possible perspectives of studies on psychological phenomena. His principles consist in
studying psychological facts through the prism of the first person and consider man in his drama. Despite being Hungarian, the author walked his political and intellectual path in France in the 20th century, a time when Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) focused
on psychological phenomena under the prism of phenomenology, proposing an Existential Psychoanalysis at the end of Being and Nothingness (1943). In this sense, we will verify to what extent the Sartrian theory can contemplate Politzer’s principles
of a concrete psychology.