Sigmund Freud

The thesis of this book is that despite Freud's low opinion of philosophy and despite his claim that psychoanalysis avoids value judgements, psychoanalytic theory does contain a moral philosophy.

Despite his low opinion of the philosophical enterprise and his attempt to avoid value questions, Freud does in fact develop a moral philosophy. Although he does not propose a moral theory as such, there is a moral theory implicit in his theory of human nature. According to Freud, instincts constitute the core of human nature, and one should try to satisfy one's instincts as fully as possible--taking into account the many forms these instinctual impulses can assume. An instinct exerts pressure (...) on the mind to get a person to act in such a way as to reduce inner tension, and thereby experience pleasure. Pleasure always comes through tension reduction. Freud's views on instincts changed over the years, most notably with his postulation of the death instinct in 1920. But except for this problematic death instinct, Freud's views on instincts all imply a theory of individualistic hedonism: all pleasure, and only pleasure, is intrinsically good; pleasures differ only in quantity, not in quality; an individual should maximize his or her own pleasure ; there are certain fundamental conflicts between an individual and society. Both hedonism and individualism can be criticized from the standpoint of Aristotle's moral philosophy. If Aristotle is right that pleasure is the completion of activity, and that human beings are essentially social, Freud's moral theory cannot stand. (shrink)

Chomsky behauptet, daß das Bewußtsein die Struktur eines grammatischen Übersetzungsapparates hat, Freud dagegen betrachtet es als einen unbewußten Geisteszustand. Es wird gezeigt, wie sich diese Theorien innerhalb einer Metaphysik des Bewußtseins vereinbaren lassen, die nur bewußte Geisteszustände als grundlegend, Sinneswahrnehmungen, Bilder, Emotionen und dergleichen als sekundär, und veranlagungsbedingte Geisteszustände als tertiär bezeichnet. Hervorzuheben wäre, daß grammatische Übersetzungsapparate und unbewußte Geisteszustände, wie alle menschlichen Veranlagungen, als Eigenheiten des Körpers, welcher gewissen Gesetzen und Prinzipien unterliegt, zu analysieren sind.

This book explores the clinical processes of psychoanalysis by charting modern developments in logic and applying them to the study of insight. Offering an epistemic approach to clinical psychoanalysis this book places value on the clinical interpretations of both the analysand and analyst and engages in a critique on purely linguistic approaches to psychoanalysis, which forsake crucial dimensions of clinical practice. Drawing on the work of key twentieth century thinkers including Jerome Richfield, Ignacio Matte-Blanco, Gregory Bateson and the pioneering contribution (...) on insight made by James Strachey, topics of discussion include: the structure and role of clinical interpretation interpretation and creationism body, meaning and language logical levels and transference. As such, this book will be of great interest to all those in the psychoanalytic field, in particular those wanting to learn more about the study of insight and its relationship to clinical processes of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Freud was the first author to conceive internal motivational conflict in economic terms. Although behaviorists have often rejected his concepts because the findings that gave rise to them were based on subjective methods, they are largely compatible with behavioral data on motivation, and indeed predicted by Herrnstein's matching law. Psychoanalysis is much closer to behavioral than to cognitive psychology, which does not conceive self-contraditory behavior as a motivational problem.

The contributors to the book discuss the depth-psychological concepts of amae and wa, the Ajase complex, and the filial piety complex, underscoring the ...

In this commentary, we challenge the claim that Freud's thinking anticipated Bartlettian reconstructive theories of remembering. Erdelyi has ignored important divergences that demonstrate it is not the case that “The constructions and reconstructions of Freud and Bartlett are the same but for motive” (target article, sect. 5).

The conception of subjectivity that dominates the Western philosophical tradition, particularly during the Enlightenment, sets up a simple dichotomy: either the subject is ultimately autonomous or it is merely a causally determined thing. Fichte and Freud challenge this model by formulating theories of subjectivity thattranscend this opposition. Fichte conceives of the subject as based in absolute activity, but that activity is qualified by a check for which it is not ultimately responsible. Freud explains the behavior of the self in terms (...) of biological drives and social pressures, yet both forces are actively interpreted by the subject itself. The tensions that arise from these very different approaches show that both Fichte and Freud are trying to overcome this deeply imbedded dichotomy between freedom and determinism. Although some would respond to these tensions by trying to forge a Hegelian synthesis, such a resolution covers over the paradoxical nature of finite subjectivity. (shrink)

This Derridean reading of Freud asks the question of how we should read Freud with respect to sexual difference and what Derrida considers a radicalized concept of trace, a "scene of writing" of differance ---that is, how we should read Freud with respect to phallogocentrism. Throughout I consider the possible relationships between the "mainstyles" of various psychoanalyses, deconstructions, and feminisms. By analyzing what is most original for Freud---the cause of hysteria, the navel of the dream, the perceptual identity, the primal (...) phantasies, for example---I find that Freud consistently seeks a single origin, a "caput Nili," on which to base a grand narrative. At first this narrative is an etiology of hysteria, but it evolves into a masterplot of sexual development and later into one of humanity. The establishment of an oedipal origin and telos, and the masterplot based on them, moves psychoanalysis toward a totalizing theory, and therefore its openness to chance and something beyond what that theory can master is greatly reduced. ;I approach these topics in terms of a question of the ethics of psychoanalysis. This appropriative or reductive process of Freud's masterplotting is based on what Derrida calls "castration-truth" in his reading of Lacan, "Le facteur de la verite." In contrast to some theorists who appeal to the radical spirit of Freudian theory as a basis for their radicalization of psychoanalysis---specifically Barnaby B. Barratt's Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse---I argue that Lacan's phallogocentric "return to Freud" is actually a more faithful one since I find both "mainstyles" of these psychoanalyses based on a logic of lack or "castration-truth." I argue throughout that the radical spirit of Freud is at times overemphasized or exaggerated by Derridean theorists---and even Derrida himself, though rarely---and that the dominant specter of Freud is an "establishment" or appropriative one, rather than one which is radical or "other-wise." I connect this trend of Derridean thinkers claiming too much debt to psychoanalysis to these thinkers not taking seriously Freud's commitment and interest in an idealized phylogenetics: "phylo-'genetics.'" Since my establishment of this establishment specter of Freud as the "mainstyle" of Freudian theory itself risks reproducing exactly the kind of appropriative discourse I hope to problematize, I attempt to avoid such a reproduction by considering what remains of the radical spirit of Freudian theory in what might be called a deconstructive "technology of iterability;" a "cyborg-analysis;" or what I call "post-psychoanalysis.". (shrink)

Freud finds it impossible to accept the existence of a Supreme Being because he thinks that there is no way to scientifically demonstrate or prove the existence of a being so defined. Consequently, Freud maintains that individuals who claim to have a religious experience of God suffer from a delusion. Such individuals remain in an infantile state of neurotic denial, fooling themselves about the reality of extramental existence.In contradistinction, Max Scheler, a student of Husserlian phenomenology, can accept the existence of (...) God because he finds that God. understood as the summum bonum, is the superlative value to which humanity can give assent in the religious act. Within the context of the religious act, an individual can come to discover or realize God. But this discovery is not made through a scientific demonstration or proof. Unlike Freud, Scheler shows that this discovery comes about via a phenomenological methodology which endorses a broader view of experience. Scheler ultimately makes the further claim that those individuals, like the scientist, who choose not to engage in the religious act are, in fact, involved in a delusional state.So, both thinkers claim that the other is in a delusional state. The task I undertake in this paper is to place these two thinkers into dialogue with one another in order to evaluate their specific methodologies. First, I explicate Freud’s view of religion. In doing so, I make explicit Freud’s empirical methodology and mechanistic materialism which is the root for his claim that God exists as an illusion or “wretched makeshift” of the neurotic unconscious mind. Next, I present the Schelerian response to Freud and positivistic science by making explicit the parameters of the religious act which recognizes God as the superlative value. Finally, I assess the views of Freud and Scheler, and in so doing, show that Scheler’s phenomenological methodology, with its emphasis upon bracketing empirical presuppositions, has merit in that it broadens experience beyond merely what is scientifically observed. We see that Freud’s claim that all experience needs to be scientifically demonstrated is too narrow a view of experience. And so, by denying other types of possible epistemologies and methodologies, he and his followers of the empirical methodology of strict positivism involve themselves in a delusional state by not accepting these approaches to extramental reality. However, I maintain that the psychoanalytic method advocated by Freud has merit in that it can be a useful aid to a person involved in or seeking to be involved in the religious act. In the end I show how it is possible to view the empirical methodology of Freud and the phenomenological methodology of Scheler as coexisting and harmonizing with one another. (shrink)

Freud finds it impossible to accept the existence of a Supreme Being because he thinks that there is no way to scientifically demonstrate or prove the existence of a being so defined. Consequently, Freud maintains that individuals who claim to have a religious experience of God suffer from a delusion. Such individuals remain in an infantile state of neurotic denial, fooling themselves about the reality of extramental existence.In contradistinction, Max Scheler, a student of Husserlian phenomenology, can accept the existence of (...) God because he finds that God. understood as the summum bonum, is the superlative value to which humanity can give assent in the religious act. Within the context of the religious act, an individual can come to discover or realize God. But this discovery is not made through a scientific demonstration or proof. Unlike Freud, Scheler shows that this discovery comes about via a phenomenological methodology which endorses a broader view of experience. Scheler ultimately makes the further claim that those individuals, like the scientist, who choose not to engage in the religious act are, in fact, involved in a delusional state.So, both thinkers claim that the other is in a delusional state. The task I undertake in this paper is to place these two thinkers into dialogue with one another in order to evaluate their specific methodologies. First, I explicate Freud’s view of religion. In doing so, I make explicit Freud’s empirical methodology and mechanistic materialism which is the root for his claim that God exists as an illusion or “wretched makeshift” of the neurotic unconscious mind. Next, I present the Schelerian response to Freud and positivistic science by making explicit the parameters of the religious act which recognizes God as the superlative value. Finally, I assess the views of Freud and Scheler, and in so doing, show that Scheler’s phenomenological methodology, with its emphasis upon bracketing empirical presuppositions, has merit in that it broadens experience beyond merely what is scientifically observed. We see that Freud’s claim that all experience needs to be scientifically demonstrated is too narrow a view of experience. And so, by denying other types of possible epistemologies and methodologies, he and his followers of the empirical methodology of strict positivism involve themselves in a delusional state by not accepting these approaches to extramental reality. However, I maintain that the psychoanalytic method advocated by Freud has merit in that it can be a useful aid to a person involved in or seeking to be involved in the religious act. In the end I show how it is possible to view the empirical methodology of Freud and the phenomenological methodology of Scheler as coexisting and harmonizing with one another. (shrink)

This essay presents imaginary philosophical debates between Heidegger and Freud exploring their views on science, philosophy, their interrelationship and the fundamental philosophical presuppositions of Freud’s metapsychology. In the final section, Heidegger presents a series of criticisms of Freud’s theory, to which ‘Freud’ posthumously responds.

« Qu’êtes-vous politiquement ? ». À cette question, Freud, selon une anecdote célèbre, répondait « Politiquement, je ne suis rien »1. Et si son interlocuteur insistait, au-delà de ce nada ! formel, à signifier que, « politiquement », il faut arborer sa couleur , Freud ne se démontait pas : alors, s’il lui fallait nommer..

Many of the leading Freudian analysts, including in the early days, Jung, Adler, Reich and Rank, attempted to link the writings of Nietzsche with the clinical ...

It is commonly assumed that Victorian patriarchs disposed of their women by making myths of them; but then as now social mythology had an unpredictable life of its own, slyly empowering the subjects it seemed to reduce. It also penetrated unexpected sanctuaries. If we examine the unsettling impact upon Sigmund Freud of a popular mythic configuration of the 1890's we witness a rich, covert collaboration between documents of romance and the romance of science. Fueling this entanglement between the clinician's proud (...) objectivity and the compelling images of popular belief is the imaginative power of that much-loved, much-feared, and much-lied-about creature, the Victorian woman.Nina Auerbach, associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction as well as articles on Victorian women and culture. The present essay is an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, a mythography of Victorian Womanhood. (shrink)

Neither the lived body, taken up by Merleau-Ponty after Husserl, nor the libidinal body theorised by psychanalysts after Freud, can be reduced to the counted, measured, physical body, apprehended only from outside. Both phenomenology and psychoanalysis set forth the priority of a global subjective lived body, approached "from within". However, their perspectives seem to differ when it comes to the conception of the interiority of this lived body, which psychoanalysis deems as imaginary. This paper examines the similarities and discrepancies between (...) the Merleau-Pontyan phenomenological body and the Freudian erogenous body. It attempts to show how the very categories of perception and imagination are reversed when moving from one discipline to the other. It concludes by proposing some lines along which the comparison could be prolonged. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper presents the main directions of a new research project that centres on the paradox of the enunciation of the universal. Historical experience and the history of philosophy have made us highly sceptical towards the very possibility of enunciating the universal, yet the universal can be said to have become a fact of contemporary life, and the attempt at enunciating the universal remains an inescapable demand, in politics and notably in practice. Not to enunciate the universal is impossible, but (...) to enunciate it is untenable. Three directions of questioning emerge from this paradox. First, a rereading of Hegel helps us to study the conflict of universalities. Second, with Marx, we can revisit the problem of ideology, the relation between the enunciation of the universal and the idea of domination. And thirdly, by rereading texts by Freud on identification and ideality, we can revisit the relation of the universal to the idea of community, and the aporia of its deconstruction. (shrink)

O autor esboça um quadro configurativo das linhas-mestras do pensamento pedagógico de Freud, bem como da antropologia onde se inscreve. Defende que as reflexões pedagógicas freudianas desenham o perfil duma concepção agónica da educação, marcada pelo propósito de nos colocar diante dos aspectos trágicos da educação. /// L'auteur esquisse le cadre des lignes maîtresses de la pensée pédagogique de Freud ainsi que de l'anthropologie oú elle s'inscrit. Il soutient que les réflexions pédagogiques freudiennes dessinent une conception agonique de l'éducation, conception (...) oú se marque le propos de nous confronter aux aspects tragiques de l'éducation. /// The author sketches what can be considered the key concepts of Freud's thought concerning aducation; this thought implies a certain anthropology. Freud's reflection on education is agonic and implies tragic aspects. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays concerned with the thematic implications of Freud's deep interest in the art objects in his collection of antiquity.