Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Wittgenstein And Freud
Roberto Rojo
It is not my purpose to analyse Wittgenstein's view and critique of psychoanalysis, but
to show that some of the fundamental ideas of the first and second stages of
Wittgenstein's philosophy are in some way inspired, or, in my opinion, influenced by
significant reflexions about dream found in Die Traumdeutung. I consider this
hypotheses better founded than defending a mere coincidence, for two reasons: a)
Wittgenstein knew Freud's book well and b) exactly like Freud, he set up as a model
Galton's photographies, a scientist better known for other achievements.
The fundamental points of contact or freudian influence over Wittgenstein's thought
are, according to my judgement, the following: 1) the idea that constant or logical
relationships do not represent, 2) a critique of isomorphism, 3) a distinction between
latent and manifest content which opens the possibility for the distinction between
surface and deep grammar and 4) the air or family resemblance suggested by Galton's
photographies.
1) The logical relations.
Wittgenstein says in his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, " My fundamental idea is that
the "`logical constants´" are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of
the logical facts" (4.0312). A similar idea is developed amply by Bertrand Russell (An
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth) in reference to "either/or" which has no other
psychological meaning than the feeling of hesitancy, related in practical life to some form
of election. There are no alternative acts, there is no situation in the world expressed by
that disjunction.
In Die Traumdentung, Freud expresses an exactly coincident idea in reference to
dream, because oniric activity cannot express logical relations like "no", or a disjunction
like either/or, nor a contradiction. "Dreams cannot in general express the alternative `or´
(id. VI Die Traumarbeit, 315) It is the subject which introduces in the dream the
alternative meant, using a roundabout way with determinate images or contents in order
to make the relation plastic.
The behaviour of dreams in relation to opposition and to contradiction is also
particularly striking to Freud, because 'no' does not appear to exist in oniric activity.
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