Dewey and Freud

: In this chapter, Colapietro discusses Dewey’s critique of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis in Human Nature and Conduct (1922). Rejecting Freud’s instinct theory, Dewey argues that impulses are flexible and shaped by experience rather than fixed drives. Yet, as Colapietro shows, Dewey’s account of impulse transformation – through discharge, suppression, or sublimation – parallels Freud’s concept of drive vicissitudes, despite avoiding Freud’s focus on repression and the unconscious. Dewey refutes the idea that fear, aggression, and love are innate instincts, instead viewing impulses as evolving within complex social contexts. His anti-elementalist stance rejects reductionist psychology, replacing it with a dynamic account of personality formation influenced by culture and environment. The chapter illustrates how Dewey’s theory of impulse modification offers a socially embedded alternative to instinct theory. Colapietro underscores that, for Dewey, moral and intellectual growth depends not on suppressing impulses but rather on intelligently redirecting them within dynamic social environments.