Wednesday, January 02, 2008

LET'S BRING BACK PSYCHOANALYSIS (REVISED)

I'm an admirer of Freud now but I wasn't always. I used to feel uncomfortable with ideas like childhood sexuality, the centrality of dreams, and the existence of the subconscious. I'm not aware that the fantasies and dreams I had when I was a kid had any influence on my adult life, and I just couldn't see any evidence for a subconscious. When I read that Freud was an advocate of cocaine, that tore it, I just dropped him from my thoughts. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I was too hasty.



When you think about it, psychoanalysis is an interesting idea. Modern methods of counseling nudge the patient toward normal behavior. They aim to produce a functioning citizen, and that's all. Psychoanalysis on the other hand, attempts to take the patient on a weird and fantastic journey through uncharted territory. The patient becomes Odysseus or Jason. He matures and deepens and sometimes even becomes heroic through conflict with demons from the netherworld. When the cure is arrived at the patient can look back on his trip as one of his great life experiences. The goal is not simply to create a citizen but to create a brave, powerful and wise human being.

Of course analysis is expensive and time-consuming and I imagine that a lot depends on the character of the analyst. Probably over time analysis became somewhat dry and formulistic. Maybe that's because society changed and shed its romantic roots. The analysts thought they were following Freud's rules because they stuck to what he said in print, but they neglected to add the flavor and feel of the romantic era that produced Freud. Some of the rules for psychoanalysis were unwritten because in Freud's time they were taken for granted. Things like the love of heroism and the passion for adventure were the common belief of everyone then living. You can't undertake analysis without a strong sense of this, yet it might not appear anywhere in the writing.

I know what you're thinking. All that journey stuff is fine but when it comes down to it, what really matters is, does it work? Was Freud right? My answer is that it probably doesn't work a lot of the time, but who cares? The journey is enriching all by itself, regardless of the outcome. You may come out of it a neurotic, but you'll be a more interesting neurotic.



All of us in the arts have something to be grateful to Freud for. He influenced all the arts, maybe literary novels and acting especially , but also painting, photography and even genre fiction like horror, sci-fi and thrillers. And what about politics? Freud's emphasis on sexuality and looking inward was one of the cornerstones of the 60s.


Freud is a gold mine of inspiration for writers. It must be a lot of fun to write scenes like: "I dreamed I was in a room with two tables, each with a vase of flowers and a clock. I tried to smell the flowers but I was overcome with a feeling of dread, as if the flowers didn't want me there, and the clocks began to tick, louder and louder . Outside I heard a car slam on its brakes and a loud crash. I tried to run to the window to see what happened, but..." And you have to admit that Freud-influenced screen plays provide much-needed work for Theramin operators.




It would be hard to over-estimate Freud's influence on the modern world. He took a lot that was over-the-top about 19th century literary romanticism and repackaged in the form of therapy for the 20th century. No small feat, that. Maybe Freud was the greatest of the Romantics.




It's a stretch, but you could argue that Freud was one of the people who saved the West from communism. Marxism was spreading like wildfire among intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th century and it only hit a stone wall when it came up against Freud and the nationalist romantics. Freud's ideas weren't antagonistic to Marx, but they represented another systematic way of seeing the world, which existed completely outside of Marxism. After Freud, Marxism was not the "next new thing"...it was just one of a number of new things.







20 comments:

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anon: Sorry I deleted your comment when I rebooted. Your negative opinion about Skinner is shared by a lot of people but I find things to like about him. You have to admire his attempt to make psychology scientific

Anonymous said...

Interesting, but I'm too much of a historical and cultural ignoramus to know half of what you're talking about or have an opinion!

Pseudonym said...

The thing that is important for me is that Freud was a pioneer. Pioneers are allowed to be wrong so long as they come up with a long-asting idea.

One of Freud's long-lasting ideas was that talk could be used as effective therapy. Nobody realised this before him.

Anonymous said...

I like Freud. His concepts of id, ego, and superego are extremely useful. How 'real' they actually are isn't important, I just see them as simple tools for analyzing my own motivations.

I want to make sure that my ego is running the show, but my ego gives my id a lot of space to do what it wants but both of them keep that little twerp my superego in check. I try not to listen to that pussy. He's not looking out for me.

So do any Theory Corner readers know some of Freud's influences? His theories seem unique but he must have picked up bits of them from others.

Anonymous said...

I admire his attempt but his conclusions were ridiculous. As a creative person Id think youd find Skinners rejection of any kind of inner thought processes to be ridiculous. Can you imagine being a psychology student in the 50's?

Chomsky wrote a brilliant deconstruction of Skinners theory which you can find here
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm

The Barker said...

I noticed in college that all my poseur-Marxist professors had a particular disdain for Freud. Of course, they were always trying to convince their students that human sexuality is a societal construct, and we're all one open-minded group hug away from swinging both ways and reproducing without the TYRANNY of the NUCLEAR FAMILY (UGH) which is only designed to get us to BUY THINGS like houses and baby wipes. It's all connected, maaaan!

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Anon: Thanks for the Skinner article. It was long and dry so I only skimmed it, but I bookmarked it and I'll come back to it some time when I have the time to persevere through it. I wish the people who write papers like this would write a summary in ordinary, conversational language.

If you understood this, then maybe you can summarize the argument.

Anonymous said...

Have you read Freud is a Fraud by Freed?

Anonymous said...

Great post! I recently took a Freud anthology out of the library. I'm not sure to what extent Freud's theories stack up today, but they're fascinating to read about. My favorite part is "Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious", which examines the roots and methods of wit and humor. Have you read it?

Lester Hunt said...

I have to say that my opinion of Freud is extremely low. But the case you make for him here is very attractive, about the most appealing one I have seen. Especially the part about providing work for unemployed Theremin players. Now that was a contribution!

I.D.R.C. said...

Freud should probably be respected more than reviled. He came up with a way of modeling the human brain.

We will probably get in less trouble thinking of his ideas as malleable and revisable --but id, superego, subconscious, phallic symbol... all really useful.

The main flaw in the psychoanalytical approach seems to be the assumption that you can fix a person by making him understand how he got all screwed up. How does that work?

Hypnotherapy is a more useful model. It relies on the subconscious. It says if you have bad programming you can just install a better program.

Chris S. said...

... you have to admit that Freud-influenced screen plays provide much-needed work for Theramin operators.

Awesome.

Kevin Koch said...

Eddie, you rock. Of course, as a former psychiatrist I find these kinds of discussions fun.

What's also interesting is the way psychiatry has been portrayed over the years in film. Except for a brief period at the height of psychoanalysis (in the '30s and '40s, with films like Spellbound, in general films have shows shrinks as either more impaired than their patients, or flat out incompetent/useless, or as murderous whack jobs. I think the whole idea that someone might understand your inner life is too scary for most people, so we need to marginalize those who try.

Mr. Trombley said...

Dear Sir, I have several remarks to make on your post, if you are willing to hear me out.

My first comment is a note. William James, the American philosopher, had written influential treaties on the unconscious before Freud. I've never read them, but I heard about them while reading on the much more interesting philosopher, Charles S. Peirce.

My second comment is a misunderstanding on my part. I don't understand how Freud or his times were romantic. To me, they seem very uncomfortable.

My third comment is a boast. You probably recall the famed trial of O.J. Simpson. Did you ever notice how calm Mr Simpson behaved? Mr Simpson was, in truth, hypnotized and I personally know his the man who did the hypnosis.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Lester: Thanks! I'd probably agree with your criticisms of Freud, but somehow the whole of his ideas seem to transcend the flaws of the parts.

Kevin: Holy Mackeral! Why did you ever leave it? It's the only therapy I know of that treats humans as something more than a machine that needs to be fixed.

Trombley: Who was Pierce? I never heard the name before. I'll look it up.

I should have capitalized the word "Romantic", because I was refering to the Romantic Era (Coleridge, Byron, etc.), not something having to do with love.

Kevin Koch said...

I left it because I loved the collaborative joy of animation (psychiatry is a heavy burden, carried alone) and because managed care didn't let me practice in the best interest of most of my patients. And because I confidently thought I could always go back to it, though with every passing day my skills erode that much more.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Kevin: Fascinating! Well, those are good reasons. I feel the same way about collaboration. Working with a bunch of skilled people to get the best possible product in the can is exhillerating.

Anonymous said...

Let's never bring back that stuff!!!
freud is the biggest fraud of the century. He was nuts... Now you have everyone standing on the shaking foundations of a disturbed feller who wante dto make a name for himself!

Anonymous said...

Let's never bring back that stuff!!!
freud is the biggest fraud of the century. He was nuts... Now you have everyone standing on the shaking foundations of a disturbed feller who wante dto make a name for himself!

pappy d said...

Eddie:

PC: a Freudian speaks out

http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/PCJABS.htm