Herbert Marcuse turned Freudianism on its head in his critical theory. (Answer in 150 words)

- Herbert Marcuse turned Freudianism on its head in his critical theory. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Freud held repression to be the permanent price of civilisation. Marcuse kept his categories and reversed his verdict, arguing in Eros and Civilization (1955) that most repression is historical, therefore removable, and that instinct can ground liberation.

Body
1. Historicising the reality principle: Freud's timeless conflict between pleasure and reality becomes the performance principle, the form the reality principle takes under competitive capitalism.
2. Basic versus surplus repression: only some renunciation is required by any organised life; the rest is surplus repression demanded by a particular structure of domination, and it can be abolished.
3. Scarcity is over: technology has conquered material want, so the rationale for toil and instinctual denial has lapsed, making a non-repressive civilisation conceivable.
4. Repressive desublimation: One-Dimensional Man (1964) shows the system granting sexual licence while absorbing dissent, leaving only the Great Refusal of students and outsiders.

Conclusion
Marcuse fused Marx and Freud to make the psyche a site of politics, converting Freudian pessimism into a theory of emancipation. Fromm's charge of romanticism stands, but the inversion remains critical theory's boldest move.