Category Archives: Freud

Freud on the “Freudian Slip”

23 Tuesday Feb 2021

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The previous look at The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is found here.

            The “Freudian slip” is the most famous of all concepts from Freud. It occurs when someone reveals a hidden motivation by substituting the “wrong” word. As he begins this essay, Freud reviews the work done by Meringer and Mayor, and then the observations of Wundt. 

Freud underscores an element from Wundt – an element which Freud will enforce at the end of this essay: These slips of the tongue take place when there is a “suspension of the attention that it would inhibit it, the uninhibited flow of associations is activated and may be said, even more definitely, to do so through that suspension.” (60) As he says toward the end of the essay, “I do not think anyone would make a slip of the tongue [examples given], in short in all those cases where, as one may say, the mind is really concentrated on the matter in hand.” (96)

Freud rejects the argument that slips of the tongue are merely the result of confusing or substituting sounds of words. He does not deny that sounds of words can have an effect upon errors, and indeed may be the cause of some errors:

But they do not seem to me strong enough to impair correct speech by their own influence alone. In those cases that I have studied closely and of which I can claim some understanding, they merely represent an existing mechanism that can easily be used by a remote psychic motive without its binding itself to the sphere of influence of those connections. In a great many substitutions, a slip of the tongue occurs quite regardless of such laws of phonetics. (79)

Freud explains that he uses these slips to “resolve and track down neurotic symptoms.” (78) Patients “may try to conceal the subject, but cannot help revealing it unintentionally in many different ways.” 

He contends that his theory “will stand up to examination even in its minor details.” (95)

To support his contention, he notes dozens of instances where someone substitutes one word for another, and thereby discloses a secret they had hoped to conceal. 

I found most compelling the example he gave from the novel Egoist by George Meredith (I cannot agree with Freud that Meredith is the “greatest English novelist”). Without rehearsing the entire nature of the example, the proposition is that a woman in the novel, by a confusion of names reveals a secret hope and desire she tries to keep concealed – but cannot. Why I found this example compelling is that is an independent attestation by someone other than Freud (or a professional psychologist/psychiatrist) of the same idea.  Now, since Meredith was a rough contemporary of Freud, it is possible that such ideas “were in the air.” 

However, Freud provides an example from Shakespeare where Portia discloses herself by a slip.

Let’s take his concept seriously, that people sometimes say what they mean to conceal. I would think that best explained by the fact that a person is intently thinking about two things and is speaking with the hope of not saying something but the thoughts get the better of the tongue – we can’t concentrate on two things at once. For instance, Freud gives an example of where he is attempting to defend himself from a conflict with his wife and thus discloses something he did not wish to say.

But Freud has a rather different theory of what happens: He puts the emphasis on the unintended nature of the disclosure. In his theory, the concealed fact just finds a way out because sufficient control is not being brought to bear upon the speech so the unconscious makes a break for it. 

Yet, I think his examples could easily be re-read as not an unconscious escape but rather the conflict of multiple thoughts. 

For instance, he gives the example of where a soldier on trial for burglary used the word Diebstellung – position as thief – when he meant to use the word Dienstellung – military service.  The soldier made this blunder while testifying in Court. But it is in just such a circumstance that Freud said a slip would not occur, “in a speech made in defense of his name and honor before a sworn jury” (96). The soldier was trying to explain that he could not have committed the crime because he was still in the military: but he would at the same time be thinking of what he had been accused. 

If there are revealing substitutions, I don’t think he proves a subversive unconscious but rather a confusion of thoughts. 

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.3

28 Friday Aug 2020

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The last post concerning this book may be found here:

In the last section of the chapter In Defense of the Analytic Attitude, Rieff comes to the questions of Freud’s “children,” those who followed after him. This question of Freud’s descendants will comprise the majority of the remaining book. At this point, Rieff looks generally at psychoanalysts, with some mention of Adler and Jung. Jung will also get an entire chapter of consideration.

Rieff notes some basic elements of a system. There is a canon, or a source of authority: “Every science has its established body of authoritative makers of opinion.” (69) There is also a system of conveying that knowledge through education. Rieff notes the poor quality of the education, which rather than delivery intellectually inquisitive analysts who can quarrel with their “father,” “Those post-Freudian analysts who remain orthodox never have had that healthy bout of rebelling which sharpens orthodoxy.” (84)

He lays a great deal of the trouble to analysis being made a branch of medicine. The discipline thus took on a non-productive empiricism and reductionism which was counterproductive to the process of analysis.

There is also the tendency to fall away from Freud’s anti-commitment. In the Freudian there are simply powerful psychic forces which seek for place in the functioning of the human being; there are also countervailing forces which seek to limit the demands of the id. There is then a negotiated peace of the ego.

Freud’s work was to merely lay bare the process of these competing forces: one welling up in the individual; the other pressing down from the outside, mediated by an internalization in the individual. To maintain an objective distance, and to prevent the patient from being brought into a more intimate relationship with the therapist, there is the necessity of the fee. The fee acts to “guarantee the essential impersonality behind the ostensibly intensely personal character of the psychoanalytic relationship.” (87)

But the pressure will always be present to select a new system of symbolic commitment to make such a competition of forces and the resolution of such forces into a meaningful whole. 

Freud’s goal was to make men “free”: you could do what you wanted with your own forces welling up and forcing tapping down. There was a need for strength to understand these forces and to not succumb to any system which would soften the blow and make the resolutions on its own terms. 

But the power of such knowledge proves too much, oftentimes, “For inevitably, at a certain point of societal power, knowledge seeks to transform itself into faith.” (83)

Jung did this by means of a “God [] rendered completely interior. The ‘Thou’ term becomes a function of ‘I.’” (83) But since Jung will receive a chapter, he is presented briefly. 

Here Rieff directs some attention to Adler’s political theory of analysis. Rather than deal with the ambiguity of a multiplicity of forces and turns in the individual life, Adler however sought a single master narrative, an explanation which gathered up all the individual examples into a single force and competition. 

Adler’s theory of an “inferiority complex.” Rieff explains Adler in terms of Adler’s socialism and class war. The feeling of “organ inferiority.” The North American Soceity of Adlerian Pyschology summarizes it thus:

Adler photo
Alfred Adler

“In his youth, Adler was a sickly child, which caused him embarrassment and pain. These early experiences with illnesses and accidents probably account for his theory of organ inferiority and were the foundation for his theories on inferiority feelings. According to Adler, each individual has a weak area in his or her body–organ inferiority, which tends to be the area where illness occurs, such as the stomach, head, heart, back, lungs, etc. Adler said that to some degree every emotion finds expression in the body. From his understanding of organ inferiority, Adler began to see each individual as having a feeling of inferiority.”

Rieff explains this in terms of Adler’s transformation of psychoanalysis into politics.

“Viewed thus, Alder’s psychology reveals the quality of his socialism; it was, said Freud, characterized by (1) protest and (2) self-assertion, the aggrandizement of personality. Here is a sudden swoop down into the very bowels of the socialist dynamic, with its inevitable cult of personality wherever it triumphs.” (81)

Rieff quotes Freud further on Adler’s system, “The view of life which is reflected in the Adlerian system is founded exclusively on the aggressive impulse; there is no room in it for love. It might surprise one that such a cheerless view of life should meet with any attention at all.” (82)

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic 4.2

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

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(In Defense of the Analytic Attitude)

In the remainder of the chapter, Rieff distinguishes Freud from what came after.  The distinction which Rieff draws is between Freudian “freedom” and a “cure.” Freud offers no solution, only a “technology” which will allow one to understand the working of their subconscious. The end game, as seemingly proposed by Rieff would be the freedom from the “residues of religious compulsion.” (79) This may be achievable with a combination of Freudian analysis and behavioral technique. (Ibid.)

Freudian analysis “is the aim of science – power; in this case a transformative technology of the inner life….This is ultimate technology.” (79)

The purpose of “faith” is to mitigate suffering: “all religions have a therapeutic function.” (76) Jung sought to scoop up all religions with his theory of archtypes. An interesting observation is how Rieff sees Jung and Freud as inversions of one another. Freud understood “erotic instinctual forces” sublimate themselves into the “highest ethical and religious interests of man.” While Jung saw the process going in the other direction. (77)

Freud’s aim of “freedom” comes at a cost:

“What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their subsequent choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility.” (79)

This freedom is of course something which is at issue. It is taken by everyone that Freud’s theories of pscyho-social development and dream analysis and slips of the tongue – however interesting – are unquestionably not “scientific.” His technology is simply untrue. 

What is strange is that his basic proposition that your sensation of ethical constraint is a trick society has played upon, that restraint is what is holding you back, mixed with Rousseau and Hegel and whatnot and developed by his followers (some who – as we shall see – were criminally insane) has become a default argument over against the “illusion” of religion and God. It is a curious sort of position to occupy. 

But on the same ground, by what basis do Hegel’s thesis-antithesis, Rousseau’s sociology, Marx’s economic history still have currency? It seems that people pick bits and pieces of ideas without ever well-understanding either what they believe or why. They could never articulate their axioms much less their conclusions. 

We live too easily in cages built of the thought of others. Freud in his effort to bring a technology of freedom foisted insupportable conceits upon the world. When his conceits proved to be nonsense, the conceits remained.  

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 4.1

09 Thursday Jul 2020

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Chapter 4: In Defense of the Analytic Attitude

This chapter concerns Freud’s defense of his analysis. To understand this, Rieff notes two distinct understanding of the “theory of theory”.  First, there was the understanding of theory bringing the human into conformity with reality: “They being what we know them to be, the intellectual and emotional task of life is to make our actions confirm to the right order, so that we too can be right.”  The model is the true paradigm. 

There is a natural inherent order which we seek to understand and then order life. The underlying order the “model” (as Rieff) calls it is the point. There is a final end, and that end is God. 

But there is another understanding of theory which sets out to destroy gods. This sort of theory “arms us with the weapons for transforming reality instead of forcing us to conform to it.” (73) There is no purpose, no final cause. Theory is merely a way of navigating an otherwise incomprehensible universe and mitigating the pain of life. “A good theory becomes the creator of power.” (Ibid.)

It is such a power creating, reality bending theory that produces Freud and Marx. 

At this point, Rieff distinguishes Adler and Jung from Freud. Freud sought merely to set forth a theory which would give on the power to choose to live any sort of life.  He would not “cure” anyone: cure was a “religious category.”  (74) “He merely wanted to give men more options than their raw experience of life permitted them.” (74)

Freud’s mechanism leaves one nowhere: you finally kill off the old gods but there is nothing with which to replace it. Rieff notes that Adler and Jung sought to construct a basis for establishing a new cure on the other-side of analysis despite their attempts. 

The end point was the Genesis 3 promise of the Serpent, “You shall be as gods knowing good and evil.” “Freud risked the correlative implication: that healthy men need no gods.” (76)

This second form of theory and its Freudian aim of a man who no longer needs the consolation of religion or the search of a pre-existing meaning and order in nature leaves man as a carver of his good.

Freud’s concept of a world freed of gods leaves every person the one who decides his own good, which has profound implications for law. In a series of cases, the courts have found this power to create one’s own “meaning” as the basis for constitutional rights: 

The Casey decision again confirmed that our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Id., at 851. In explaining the respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices, we stated as follows: 

[“These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.] [At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.] Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” Ibid.

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 573-74 (2003). In the dissent of Lawrence, Justice Scalia wrote:

And if the Court is referring not to the holding of Casey, but to the dictum of its famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage, ante, at 13 (“`At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life'”): That “casts some doubt” upon either the totality of our jurisprudence or else (presumably the right answer) nothing at all. I have never heard of a law that attempted to restrict one’s “right to define” certain concepts; and if the passage calls into question the government’s power to regulate actions based on one’s self-defined “concept of existence, etc.,” it is the passage that ate the rule of law. 

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 588 (2003). Scalia’s point is that all law defines some sort of public character: it is a “theory” in the first sense referenced above. But in a series of decisions involving human sexuality and procreation, the courts have adopted a Freudian theory of law, in which freedom from the “gods” of any culture can be set aside. 

But such self-carving of happiness does remain a personal decision – however personally the decision is made:

Incorporating the “mystery of life” logic into these spheres deludes individuals into thinking that personal failures in socially important roles only have personal consequences. Society thus lacks the authority to explain how the personal choice of one hurts the wellbeing of others.

In other words, society cannot say whether marriage ensures that children have the benefit of a mother and a father—marriage is whatever a person wants it to be. Society cannot say whether a child suffers from no-fault divorce—divorce is a personal choice. Society cannot say whether a child is raised by parents in a relationship that society needs to survive—relationships are personal.

Should the detriments of a child’s upbringing become a social harm when he takes society’s reins as an adult, that new adult now also lacks the right moral framework to refine social standards for the benefit of his children.  Life’s “mystery” about what crafts and constitutes good conduct thus endures—even when harmful consequences counsel society to encourage some choices over others from reason and experience.

William Haun, “The “mystery of Life” Makes Law a Mystery,” The Public Discourse (July 26, 2013), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10091/.  The justification for Freud’s freeing men from deformed gods is that the culture simply no longer functions nor does it provide the ability to define character and human good. These commitment therapies are simply outdated. 

Now perhaps when an occasional person behaves along their on lines there is little communal effect. Indeed, even the most prolific murderer or robber will have only limited effect upon a society of any size. But when there is no communal standards for even the most basic means of living, then the results will profoundly damaging. Freud’s theory made constitutional right will not end well when extended to all. 

As Justice Scalia noted, the doctrine applied consistently means there can be no order, which is precisely the duty of law and culture. But, as Freud contends, there is no order to be had. 

I know that an utterly chaotic society would have been a horror to Freud. I have read nowhere that he was a anarchist. But the results of his analytic theory aim in only one direction. Indeed, he felt that Adler and Jung were wrong to try find a new basis for order. 

On the other side is the first understanding of theory, that human happiness and well-being are defined not by ourselves but by God:

Men would be happy with that kind of happiness which is true happiness, but not in the way which God propoundeth, being prepossessed with carnal fancies. It is counted a foolish thing to wait upon God in the midst of straits, conflicts, and temptations: 1 Cor. 2:14, ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.’ More prejudices lie against the means than the end; therefore, out of despair, they sit down with a carnal choice, as persons disappointed in a match take the next offer. Since they cannot have God’s happiness, they resolve to be their own carvers, and to make themselves as happy as they can in the enjoyment of present things

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 6 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1872), 7.

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 3.2

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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Rieff explains the process in this manner.  The entire culture functions as a superego, replete with symbolic expression and procedures for bringing the individual into conformity with the community purpose.  The individual is thus brought to health by conforming the individual to the community superego. 

The person who brings the individual into conformity with the community superego was the earlier therapist. In this role, particularly if the earlier “therapist” utilized any sacral symbolism, functioned as a “priest.”

To bring the individual into conformity to the community superego brought about a “transformation” of the individual and formed a “positive community. 

Rieff also proposes an interesting role for the estatic or ascetic religionist. Such a person by means of an extreme religious action which disestablishes prior bonds and re-establishes the individual into a new positive community, a new set of symbols. 

In contrast to a positive community where the therapist brings about a “transformation” the analytic therapist, as developed by Freud creates no positive community and engages in no commitment therapy. 

Freud’s therapy was precisely for the purpose of removing the “analysand” from any positive community. The therapist had no end of bringing the individual into conformity to a communal superego: quite the opposite. The individual was taught to understand the superego. The therapist does not propose any new community, he rather acts to free the analysand. 

When the analysand comes to the therapist, he is “buried alive  … in the culture.” (64) The previous sacral system is no longer a means of healing, but “sickness.” Freud offers not salvation, merely I suppose – although the this word is not used by Rieff – reality:

To be thus freed from a tyrannical cultural super-ego is to be properly bedded in the present world.

This does not mean those who followed in Freud’s footsteps were content to leave the individual freed from all external superego. Such persons are considered by Rieff later in the book. 

At this point, Rieff merely posits that analysis is a means of psychologically detaching oneself from broken symbols which are symptoms of an earlier, no longer functioning community: “The analytic therapy developed precisely in response to the need of the Western individual … for a therapy that would not depend for its effect on a symbolic return to a positive community.” (61)

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 3.1 (Community and Therapy)

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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The prior post on Triumph of the Therapeutic may be found here.

Community and Therapy, Chapter 3

In this chapter, Rieff begins with an understanding of mental health as provided by means of a symbolic system. By means of a symbolic system, the society creates a matrix in which the individual person can achieve a character ideal. To be a functioning person, the person must belong to a “positive community” which “offers some sort of salvation to the individual through participant membership.” (60)

In this scenario, the system works if the individual functions reasonably well. The system will need a sufficiently robust symbolic format and mechanism for involvement in that system. 

For the individual to function well, the individual not may but must participate in the communal life: it was only the life of the community that the life of any individual would be sufficiently well served.

Rieff then subsumes the history religion and culture into a concept of therapy:

Ultimately, it is the community that cures. The function of the classical therapist is to commit the patient to the symbol system of the community, as best he can and by whatever techniques are sanctioned. (57)

Rousseau provided a seeming break from this concept by introducing the idea that the individual must break free from the confinements of the community. But in the end, Rousseau ended up in the same place, because he merely posited the creation of a new community in the future.  

Marx took Rousseau a step further and argued that the community was utterly broken and that all that currently existed is cash interactions. But Marx was still looking for a community, just a new future community where the individual could finally be integrated into the communal whole.

From a slightly different perspective, De Tocqueville considered the possibility of a wholly democratic society where all communal bounds would be broken down and all life would be private.

But for all that, Rieff contends that prior to Freud, mental health was a matter sociology: it was obtained by means of integrating the individual to the society’s system to simultaneously define and give room for expression of the individual. 

At this point, Rieff places Freud as the one who provides a therapy to the individual when no positive community exists. 

Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, 2.3 (Culture)

11 Thursday Jun 2020

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Rieff ends the chapter “The Impoverishment of Western Culture” with a movement from the individual aspects to the way which these individual attitudes playout across a culture:

“Every culture is an institutionalized system of moral demands, elaborating the conduct of personal relations, a cosset of compelling symbols.” ( 52)

The system which surrounds the individual consists of a cultural wide system of both (1) moral demands, which is expressed by means of “compelling symbols.” Freud provided a mechanism to understand and resist those symbols.

Moreover, Freud’s system made it impossible for anyone to again try and resurrect and impose the fading moral order:

No moral demand system could ever again compel at least the educated classes to that inner obedience which bound men to rules they themselves could not change except at the expense of spirit, far beyond the usefulness of such rules to the continuance of cultural achievement.

Freud believed he had put human beings – at least educated human beings – beyond the power of some system to impose upon human beings moral demands which they did not personally find necessary. 

Rieff saw material comforts “rising expectations” as sufficient to stave off the ascetic strain of morality.  We can simply use “analysis and art” as a substitute for religion.

We were now in a place where only a “yielding demand system” could possibly hold sway (53). 

We keep seeing ourselves at the end of history, where this will just be the conclusion.

Rieff’s conclusion that Freud had created a stable place of yielding seems to fail with a vengeance. The moral demands may have changed (one must believe that biological sex is a social construct, and so on) from prior morality. That may make it appear to be “liberating”. But we are seeing moral demands as strict as anything which has been witnessed in any religion. People are keeping lists. Public displays of piety are mandatory. 

It seems that Freud may have provided a tool to go after a morality of one sort of sexual limitation, but he did not free humanity from any sort of exclusively personal moral freedom. 

Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic 2.2 (Therapy as Re-Education)

12 Tuesday May 2020

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The previous post on Rieff may be found here. 

Therapy as Re-Education

Rieff has a useful understanding of therapy in contrast religion (which in the case of Freud would be Christianity of Judaism) which Rieff refers to as “older moral pedagogies.” (45) The prior moral system required one “concentrating on the life of trying to order the warring parts of the personality into a hierarchy.” (45).

This ordering of one’s competing demands and impulses is done in accord with the requires of a “positive community” which promised “a kind of salvation” for such accord. (43).

Freud and therapy provide a completely different manner of understanding one’s self. Rather looking at the various “impulses” as a matter of good or bad, higher or lower, one should consider demands as “a jostling democracy of contending predispositions”. (46-47)

Freud realized that this new means of understanding the various “impulses” would result in a subversions of the expectations of life. In particular, the position of the “father” would be particularly subverted, because the position of father takes the position of maintaining of “repressive command”. (47).

Now it may be thought that Freud encourages immorality. But the understanding of the impulses as there does not necessarily result in the encouragement of acting on such impulses.  What Freud did do was seek to exhaust a sense of guilt built upon these moralities.

At this point, Reiff makes a rather self-contradicting argument. Freud’s analysis:

Help[s] us distinguish between guilt on one hand and a sense of guilt on the other, between responsibility for an offense committed and fantasies about offenses intended or merely imagined, seems a moral as a well as a therapeutic aim.

This argument seems to be that the older moral orders merely imposed a “fantasy” of moral order in exchange for a promise of salvation as contrasted one making a conscious decision based upon “responsibility.”  Upon what moral basis could one determine concern for “responsibility”?

There is not any rational basis for responsibility. You could say I would like to avoid whatever I might see as a negative consequence (like avoiding imprisonment) was rational – but seeing a connection between the consequence and the result does not determine whether I should not engage in the conduct. The decision to avoid the behavior to avoid the consequence is a moral decision. Granted it is a very limited morality (I want to avoid negative consequence), but it is still a moral decision.

If the negative consequence is less than imprisonment or death, than what do we mean by “responsibility”? Does he that I could care about what my behavior would do to another? That would be a moral decision.

The only sort of amoral decision would be one where I see the consequence and have not concern for the consequence.

Perhaps the concept is that I can decide whether I wish to abide by the moral code I see raised by my “impulse”. But one still must made a decision to be moral; that decision may have a very habitual basis, but it is not a reflex in the sense of blinking an eye.

Indeed the decision to forgo an “older moral paradigm” is itself a moral decision.

Freud may make one explicitly conscious of the moral decision. Freud also grants a certain sort of sanction to forgo moral decisions (this is an evil desire, it is just a desire – evil is what I have been taught to call this desire; but the desire is not in itself evil). All Freud has done lay the basis for a new morality where personal desire is necessarily good.

Thus, therapy is a matter of “re-education” into a new basis for morality.

Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Chapter 2.1 (Discipleship and Therapy)

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

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Chapter Two

The Impoverishment of Western Culture

There is an implicit claim here that symbols function as a mechanism by which a culture gains ascent over the various individuals in the culture: the means by which the superego functions. A curious question which is left unanswered is “Why symbols?”

We could argue that symbols point to the transcendent, but a proposition of Freud must be that there is no real transcendent. Why then any sort of desire or inclination in that direction? That is left unanswered. We simply learn that Freud provides us a mechanism to strip out the symbols.

We then learn that essentially Western Culture developed by means of suppressing sexual desire. (40) The control over sexual desire was the high water mark of character.

Since there is no objective morality, only pragmatics, there is no particular need for such suppression except in and so far as it is functional for the culture.

On an aside, I have noticed that the treatment for “sexual addiction” is distinction amoral in this regard. The problem is not whatever inclination, but rather whether there are negative consequences for following such an inclination.

There is an unstated morality which is present in this: Desires are inherently good. That is a moral equation in the guise of amorality. But if it were truly amoral there would be nothing better about indulging or refraining. Moreover, personal happiness could not be relevant, because anyone else’s concern for your well-being is also irrelevant.  In short, the moral question is really not as absent as some pretend. It is always there; the difference is where does not draw a line?

But back to Freud: The “analytic attitude”, the aim of “therapy” is always at the distinct individual. There is no reason to “cure” any sort of desire; because what makes Mr. X happy is necessarily good.  “Well-being is a delicate personal achievement”. (41)

This is taken as an ethical demand upon “therapy”. We start with the idiosyncratic evaluation of the patient and seek to assist in achieving that end.

That is fundamentally antithetical to the Christian demand. In Matthew 28, Christ places a solitary command upon the Church: “make disciples”. The process of disciple making is “teach the to observe all that I have commanded.”

Now one can reject the proposition that Christ spoke or that Christ spoke these words. That is an honest position, and the position of Freud, for instance. But for one to claim to be a “Christian” and also take a position that Freud has a contribution on this issue is perplexing.

The position of the Scripture is not terribly confusing. Yes, there can be knotty issues, but those are not the main. The center of the road is abundantly clear.

What is confusing is when someone proposes that there is any sort of integration possible at this key point. No one is contesting the ability of anyone to make observations about the relative frequency of X behavior. But when it comes to this question of the fundamental presuppositions, What is a human being, What is the purpose of a human being, What is necessary for human beings to change: those issues are beyond compromise or “integration”. When we get to presuppositions, those are questions of grammar.

In the English and German language, the sound “gift” has a fundamentally different meaning. In English you get one at Christmas. In German, it is “poison”.

Discipleship and therapy are similar in that both involve words and directions and people who know something is wrong. “Gift” sounds the same in English and German. But O the difference!

As a final note, if you are at all curious about the matter of the importance of “presupposition”, I must direct you to my brothers at:

Domain for Truth: https://veritasdomain.wordpress.com

 

Philip Rieff: The Triumph of the Therapeutic.3 (Religion and Therapy)

14 Tuesday Apr 2020

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On page 27, Rieff interprets religion in terms of therapy. Religion creates mechanisms for “therapeutic” control and remission: it is a mechanism for responding to and dolling out “instinct.”  The distinctions between religions are largely uninteresting except in the efficacy of providing for a means of successful in providing for “continuity of mood.”

There really is no question concerning truth or falsity; there is no morally objective right: that is the analytic posture of Freud. What Freud has done is to strip out all of the accidents, the fungible elements and consider only the real effect of religion: what and how well it controls and expressions the instincts. Thus, “The analytic attitude is an alternative to all religious ones.” (29)

There is an interesting charting of the similarity and distinctive nature of therapy and religion:

Similarities: (1) the patient or adherent must be honest “in performance”. Gravity cares very little for my position; but for either religion or analysis to “work,” I must be honest in my presentation. As a corollary, I must be “receptive” for the process to work. In short, the process must be internalized to have effect.

The divergence in the ways in which the character can be transformed.

Rieff here makes an interesting observation: While Freud is often seen as revolutionary, he actually is not poised to create some new revolutionary culture. “Freud appears as a defender of high culture.” (29) In the remainder of the book, Rieff contrasts Freud which his disciples who set far more revolutionary goals.

Since Freud’s analysis works upon the character, the eventual effect is a work upon the culture. As such it is not set to remake the world at the level of official politics, but rather at the level of the “mind.”

Freud came about because the “inherited moral systems have failed us.” (30) Since the inherited systems no longer function at a cultural level, the world was ripe for Freud to provide some mechanisms to shore up the psyche and permit human beings to function.

“The religious question: How are we to be consoled for the misery of living?” (23) Christianity and Judaism did not seek to make us happy, but to console us in our misery (although not said, you will have heaven later). Freud did not promise happiness, either; rather, he simply sought “less misery”. (30)

As such, Freud birthed an as yet not fully developed “psychological man” who has a “durable sense of well-being”. (32) This man has the capacity to make some sense out of the chaos of his psyche and the world about him. Morality is “that which is conducive to increased activity.” (33)

Freud preserved “the very notion of tradition,” by preserving a mechanism for understanding what was taking place with humanity. The theologians will find Freud helpful, because they need – as Archbishop Temple said was needed, “a theology based on psychology.” (33)

Rieff proposes that Jung has provided that psychology upon which the theologians can begin to build.