Anxiety modern society and the critical method : toward a theory and practice of critical socioanalysis Anxiety Modern Society and the Critical Method interrogates the historical intersections of political economy technology and anxiety. By analyzing and building upon the tools developed by critical theorists to diagnose the symptoms of modern life such as alienation anomie the Protestant ethic and repression Joel Michael Crombez convincingly argues for a revitalization of critical social science to better confront the anxiety of life in modern societies. With anxiety typically falling under the purview of psychology and its biomedical approach to treatment here anxiety is demonstrated to have origins in the totalizing logics of modern society. As such Crombez provides an interdisciplinary roadmap to diagnose and treat anxiety which he calls critical socioanalysis that accounts for the psychosocial complexity of its production LIST OF FIGURES PREFACE INTRODUCTION PART 1: FROM TRADITIONAL TO MODERN SOCIETY: THE CRITICAL METHOD OF EARLY MODERN SOCIAL THOUGHT Introduction Chapter I: Scenic Landscape I Traditional Life and the Totalizing Logic of Christianity A Revolution in Space and of the Mind Enlightenment and the Birth of Modernity Chapter II: Critical Methods From Philosophy to Social Theory: (Hegel Feuerbach and) Marxs Critical Method and the Totalizing Logic of Capital The Individual the Social and the Knot: Toward the Durkheimian Symptom of Anomie Totalizing the Mind and Spirit: Weber and the Unholy Union of Religion and Capital From Psychoanalysis to Socioanalysis: Anxiety Repression and Talk Therapy in Freud Conclusion PART 2: TECHNOLOGY MODERN WARS AND THE RISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE: THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL REVISITS THE CRITICAL METHOD Introduction Chapter III: Scenic Landscape II The Totalizing Logic of Capital Comes of Age: The Path to Technological Embeddedness and Mass Society The Darker Side of Modernity: World War Chapter IV: Critical Methods II The Psychosocial Origins of the Frankfurt School From the Critical Method to Critical Theory and Negative Dialectics A Lesson for Socioanalysis: Anxiety and the Social Vicissitudes of Technology and War in Mass Society Conclusion PART 3: ANXIETY DREAMS OF POSTHUMAN FUTURES: SORTING THROUGH THE DISCOURSES OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE Introduction Chapter V: Scenic Landscape III The Postmodern Rupture in Modern Society We Are All Cyborgs Now: Life in the Mass The Coming Tide: Automation Artificial Intelligence and Space Colonization Chapter VI: Critical Methods III Critical Socioanalysis: Setting Up Discourses of the Psyche and the Self: A Lacanian Framework The Other Side of Socioanalysis: A Guide for Talk Therapy Conclusion Conclusion REFERENCES INDEX.