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Sigmund Freud and the Mind-Body Problem




 My recent reading includes PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM (2022), an anthology edited by Jon Mills.

This is not one of those several-conflicting-points-of-view anthologies. Mills himself and the various authors involved all seem to share the point of view, though they approach it from different directions. 

Their contention, in a few words, is that psychoanalysis -- which these authors associate almost entirely with the work of Sigmund Freud and his most devoted followers -- implies the ontological position known as "dual-aspect monism." 

Specifically, the libidinous drive at the heart of Freudianism is neither material nor mental. It is a neutral sort of stuff, developed out of the body (which has the natural-selection defined drives to survive and to reproduce) but not simply a description of the body, yet again not mental stuff in a traditional sense of the term either.    

One way to think about the Freudian notion of "the unconscious" is precisely to think of it as the "neutral" stuff with two aspects, physical and mental. It is the conscious mind, which includes everything Berkeley called an "idea" and includes the Cartesian ability to reason about one's self, that is what most philosophers on the subject call "mind" sans phrase. 

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Comments

  1. HenryApril 4, 2023 at 4:10 PM

    Is the photo really of Freud? Something seems off about it.

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    Replies
    1. ChristopherApril 4, 2023 at 4:42 PM

      You have a good eye. The photo is from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.

      Delete
  2. Paul D. Van PeltApril 5, 2023 at 7:04 AM

    I just don't know. If the mind-body problem IS a problem, then we are surely in trouble. In a normal context, rather than psychoanalysis one, consciousness means,roughly, awareness of one's surroundings. I am conscious of a current activity which includes what words will next appear on this tablet and possibly in these comments. Unconsciousness would render these remarks impossible. That would mean I am either asleep or, in fact, unconscious. Now, I know (I think) Freud did not mean either of those states. But, his terminology is his own. I have claimed that something like extra-conscious or supra-conscious would be more accurate. But, those are my terms, not Dr. Freud's. This was not my idea. It was John Searle's idea. Roughly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HenryApril 5, 2023 at 7:26 AM

    "Supra" means "above," whereas Freud thought of the unconscious as below the conscious. But we should take that metaphorically, regardless of how Freud meant it; there are not really levels of the mind. In fact, it is misleading to use "unconscious" as a noun; there is no place where an "unconscious" exists. Rather, we have unconscious feelings, unconscious desires, and unconscious motivations. But all this means is that we are sometimes unaware of our feelings, desires, and motivations.

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