The proper range and content of the unconscious in the human sciences should be established by reference to its conceptual relationship to the folk psychology that informs the standard form of explanation therein. A study of this relationship shows that human scientists should appeal to the unconscious only when the language of the conscious fails them, i.e. typically when they find a conflict between people's self-understanding and their actions. This study also shows that human scientists should adopt a broader concept (...) of the unconscious than the one developed by Freud, that is, one free from his ahistorical concept of the instincts and his ahistorical emphasis on the sexual experiences of childhood. The unconscious, understood in this way, has an ambiguous relationship to more recent linguistic and narrativist strands of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Did Freud present a scientific hypothesis about the unconscious, as he always maintained and as many of his disciples keep repeating? This question has long prompted debates concerning the legitimacy and usefulness of psychoanalysis, and it is of utmost importance to Lacanian analysts, whose main project has been to stress Freud's scientific grounding. Here Jacques Bouveresse, a noted authority on Ludwig Wittgenstein, contributes to the debate by turning to this Austrian-born philosopher and contemporary of Freud for a candid assessment of (...) the early issues surrounding psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein, who himself had delivered a devastating critique of traditional philosophy, sympathetically pondered Freud's claim to have produced a scientific theory in proposing a new model of the human psyche. What Wittgenstein recognized--and what Bouveresse so eloquently stresses for today's reader--is that psychoanalysis does not aim to produce a change limited to the intellect but rather seeks to provoke an authentic change of human attitudes. The beauty behind the theory of the unconscious for Wittgenstein is that it breaks away from scientific, causal explanations to offer new forms of thinking and speaking, or rather, a new mythology. Offering a critical view of all the texts in which Wittgenstein mentions Freud, Bouveresse immerses us in the intellectual climate of Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century. Although we come to see why Wittgenstein did not view psychoanalysis as a science proper, we are nonetheless made to feel the philosopher's sense of wonder and respect for the cultural task Freud took on as he found new ways meaningfully to discuss human concerns. Intertwined in this story of Wittgenstein's grappling with the theory of the unconscious is the story of how he came to question the authority of science and of philosophy itself. While aiming primarily at the clarification of Wittgenstein's opinion of Freud, Bouveresse's book can be read as a challenge to the French psychoanalytic school of Lacan and as a provocative commentary on cultural authority. (shrink)

In the 1890's, Freud attempted to lay out the foundations of a complete, interdisciplinary neuroscience of the mind. The conference that gave rise to this collection of papers, Neuroscience of the Mind on the Centennial of Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology, celebrated the centrepiece of this work, the famous Project (1895a). Freud never published this work and by 1896 or 1897 he had abandoned the research programme behind it. As he announced in the famous Ch. VII of The Interpretation (...) of Dreams (1900), he would thereafter restrict himself to psychology proper, i.e., what could be done within the ambit of psychological descriptions. The task of characterizing the neural implementation of the psychological was impossible to carry out given the state of knowledge in his time. As Pribram and Gill (1976), Kitcher (1992) and others have demonstrated, Freud's attempt to sketch an interdisciplinary model of the mind using the language of neurons, quantities of energy, etc., was extremely advanced for its time and was probably about as good as could have been done with what was known in 1895. Knowledge of the brain, evolutionary biology, etc., was too limited to allow more. (shrink)

A century after it was written, Breuer and FreudísStudies on Hysteriacontinues to challenge.

Based on a 1984 conference sponsored by the Health Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this book presents a series of papers by ...

To reduce the likelihood that psychology will develop in a deeply flawed manner, the present article seeks to provide an introduction to Freud?s conception of consciousness because, for among other reasons, his general theory is highly influential in our science and culture and among the best understood by clinicians and experimentalists. The theory is complex and all of its major parts have a bearing on one another; indeed, consciousness has a central place in the total conceptual structure ? as is (...) argued, in effect, throughout the present article. The discussion focuses mainly on how conscious psychical processes differ from processes of the psychical apparatus that do not instantiate the Freudian attribute of consciousness. This intrinsic attribute that belongs to every conscious psychical process is seen as including, along with qualitative content, an unmediated, witting awareness of the psychical process that is directed upon itself. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of contemporary proponents of psychoanalysis have sought to derive support for their conjectures about the _dynamic_ unconscious from the empirical evidence in favor of the _cognitive_ unconscious. It is our contention, however, that far from supporting the dynamic unconscious, recent work in cognitive science suggests that the time has come to dispense with this concept altogether. In this paper we defend this claim in two ways. First, we argue that any attempt to shore up the (...) dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious is bound to fail, simply because the latter, as it is understood in contemporary cognitive science, is incompatible with the former, as it is traditionally conceived by psychoanalytic theory. Second, we show how psychological phenomena traditionally cited as evidence for the operation of a dynamic unconscious can be accommodated more parsimoniously by other means. (shrink)

© 2003 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

This book is a scholarly mongraph on Sigmund Freud's understanding of the basics of psychotherapy theory and practice from the perspective of phenomenology.

Jung appeals not only to professionals who are looking for a more humane and creative way of working with their clients, but also to academics in an ...

Before embarking upon the project of reformulating psychoanalysis in the 'scientific' terminology of cognitive science, we should first clearly define what psychoanalysis is about and what it is not about. Cognitive science is based upon a functionalistic philosophy of the mind. As a consequence such a project would require a functionalistic core theory of psychoanalysis. But Freud's claim of the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis, attained through the rendering conscious of what is unconscious or the making personal of what is experienced (...) by the neurotic patient as impersonal, cannot be explained by a functionalistic theory of the mind We examine Freud's claim and conclude that there ought to be a philosophy of qualia at the core of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

This innovative volume attempts to bridge the theoretical gulf between the two approaches by providing objective evidence for unconscious conflict in...

This book aims to present the control-mastery theory in a more accessible format, and introduce it to a wider audience, expanding the scope of the theory beyond ...

This book features contributions from twenty six leading experts that survey the theoretical, historical, methodological, empirical, and clinical aspects of ...

Examines those aspects of the unconscious mind most relevant to the psychiatric practitioner, including unconscious processing of affective and traumatic...

CHAPTER An Introduction to Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness Max Velmans The study of consciousness predates the founding of modern experimental ...

Freud's principal contribution to clarifying persons' relations to themselves lies in his exploration of the dynamic relations between conscious and unconscious processes. This paper addresses another aspect of Freud's ideas, one to which he himself and his followers accorded insufficient attention, namely, unconscious knowledge, in particular, unconscious knowledge of one's own mind and hence of one's own unconscious. First I show that Freud's idea of unconscious knowledge of one's own mind is epistemologically coherent and that it can be understood in (...) different ways within the framework of his basic concepts. I then discuss select examples of such knowledge from his clinical and theoretical writings. In conclusion, I pose the question of the scope of these ideas for depth psychology. (shrink)