Freud and Modern Selfhood

“There is literally nothing to be said, scientifically speaking, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.” – Psychological Science, 1996 “Arguably no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say.” – Todd Dufresne, 2004

… if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives … from W. H. Auden, “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” (1939)

3 “great humiliations” in modern history (according to Freud) 1. Copernicus: The earth is not the center of the universe. 2. Darwin: Man is not the center of creation. 3. Freud: We are not the masters of our own minds.

“In psychoanalysis, nothing occurs but the interchange of words between the patient and the physician. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and present impressions, complains, confesses his wishes and emotions. The [psychoanalyst] listens, tries to direct the thought processes of the patient, reminds him of things, forces his attention into certain channels, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of understanding or denial which he calls forth in the patient.”

“These communications concern the most intimate part of [the patient’s] psychic life, everything which as a socially independent person he must conceal from others; [they] deal with everything which, as a harmonious personality, he will not admit even to himself.”

“With two of its assertions, psychoanalysis offends the whole world and draws aversion upon itself.”

“The psychic processes are in themselves unconscious, and that those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the total psychic life.”

“To you, ladies and gentlemen, it sounds like a mere argument over words whether one shall say that the psychic coincides with the conscious or whether one shall extend it beyond that; and yet I can assure you that by the acceptance of unconscious processes you have paved the way for a decisively new orientation in the world and in science.”

Freud’s model of the self, part 1: The topographical model

Freud’s model of the self, part 2: The conflicted self

Implications Think back to what Freud promises at the beginning of his Introduction to Psychoanalysis: “a decisively new orientation in the world.” According to Freud, we cannot truly know ourselves directly. Instead, we can only learn what motivates us, why we feel and think and do as we do, by paying attention to those activities and thoughts that seem to be the least intentional, the least related to our conscious sense of who we are.

The “talking cure”: a cure for what?

Three Sources of Human Suffering 1. The human body is weak; it feels pain; it dies. 2. The world (nature) is not fully under our control, and yet it is necessary to us. 3. Social relations: society as a whole, and other human beings individually, cause us suffering and limit our satisfaction.

Civilization as a Source of Our Unhappiness “We come upon a contention which is so astonishing that we must dwell upon it. This contention holds that what we call our civilization (Kultur) is largely responsible for our misery … I call this contention astonishing because, in whatever way we may define the concept of civilization, it is a certain fact that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization.”

“The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?”

Society requires repression; it runs on sublimation. Sublimation = the translation or transformation of sexual energies into other, socially useful, energies

“Masters of Suspicion”: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud All three of these thinkers approach culture with an attitude of suspicion: the expectation that cultural forms are arranged to hide an underlying, concealed motive. Marx: class interest Nietzsche: the will to power Freud: sexuality + aggression (Michel Foucault)

… if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives … – from W. H. Auden, “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” (1939)