Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian WorldScope: To a considerable extent, the Western intellectual community is still beholden to an essentially Freudianconception of human nature, even if few will continue to argue that that conception is scientific, either inform or in content or in accessibility to refutation.Freudian theory is the culmination of the “Victorian” science of dynamics, opposition, conflict, and“conservation.” Freud (1856–1938) was trained in medicine and was indoctrinated in the essentiallypositivistic orientation of the science of the time. He also took more or less for granted the idea that humanpsychic processes have a lineage extending into the non-human animal world in which survival is theabiding challenge.Freud’s theory of mind posits unconscious dialectical oppositions between the pleasure/pain principle ofDarwinian survival and the social realities of morality and conformity, internalized as conscience. In thisstruggle, the conscious self is formed, forever inauthentic, only able to understand itself through lengthyanalysis of repressed desires revealed in dream and symbol.OutlineI. Some of the great ideas in philosophy have not been contributed by philosophers. The list of contributors islong and the specialties are diverse. Sigmund Freud is on the list but less by way of medicine than through aspecialty he personally did much to create.A. Freud needs no introduction. He has shaped contemporary perspectives on the nature of knowledge, ourunderstanding of the sources of our conduct, and our sense of the very nature of the person. He hasprofoundly influenced thought across the board in aesthetics, literary criticism, moral philosophy, andindeed, philosophy—to such an extent that one has good reason to refer to the “Freudian World.”1. After graduating from the Gymnasium first in his class, Freud studied medicine at the University ofVienna when he was 17.2. There, he came under the influence of one of the significant scientists of that period, Ernst Brucke,who was associated with Johannes Mueller, as well as Karl Ludwig, Emil DuBois-Reymond, andHermann von Helmholtz.3. Brucke and his compatriots agreed that they would accept no principle in biology that was notgrounded in the basic sciences of chemistry and physics.4. Helmholtz delivered a groundbreaking lecture on the principle of the conservation of energy, the mainpoints of which are that we can get no more from a physical system than the energy it begins with;there is no perpetual-motion machine; and biological systems are physical systems.B. The conservationist principles of Helmholtz are central to Freudian theory, particularly Freud’s theory ofhysterical symptoms as conversion reactions; that is, that hysterical blindness, paralysis, or deafness is justthe physical manifestation of something occurring at the level of psychic energy.C. Far more important to Freudian theory than conservationist principles in physics was the Darwinianrevolution, which Freud accepted, chapter and verse.1. Darwinian theory gave us, as mentioned in a previous lecture, design without a designer and designfeatures coming about as a result of raw, brutal, daily biological conflict and collision.2. Survival is dependent on the constant selfish struggle to get pleasure and avoid pain.3. It was, thus, impossible to construct a biological psychology such as Freudian analysis without theprinciples of evolution.D. Freud’s ambitions were fairly modest to begin with. He wanted to be a research scientist in medicine andhold an academic post at Vienna.1. It was clear that Freud, as a Jew, was going to face a fairly low ceiling in the very Catholic city ofVienna, as far as academic prospects were concerned.2. For this reason, he began to practice neurology, which is what he was trained in.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 23