The Origins of Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious: A Philosophical Link

by | Vol 18 (3/4) 2000

The recent publication of Freud’s correspondence to his school friend, Edward Silberstein, has provided new impetus for research into Freud’s relationship with the philosopher Franz Brentano. In this paper I will address one possible objection to any claim that the philosopher could have influenced Freud on a theoretical level. It may be argued that there could be no significant theoretical influence because the psychoanalyst constructed a model of mental functioning which presupposes an unconscious, while Brentano was a philosopher of consciousness, who denied the very existence of unconscious ideas. I will demonstrate that, despite his rejection of unconscious mental functioning, Brentano presents a systematic investigation into what he perceives to be the strongest arguments in favour of the existence of unconscious ideas. Although he finds each account to be flawed, Brentano frequently offers a possible corrective, suggesting certain conditions as principles which must be observed by anyone hoping to formulate a reasonable thesis to support the existence of unconscious ideas. I argue that it is this analysis which helped Freud to formulate a coherent account of the unconscious which does not fall prey to the objections Brentano levelled against preceding conceptions of unconscious mental processes.

Download full text

Related articles

  • The Mirror Image of the Present: Freud's Theory of Retrogressive Screen Memories

    Freud formulated the concept of retrogressive screen memories in 1897 to describe memories of past events which unconsciously portray contemporary situations. He used this concept at several points in his self-analysis and in the disguised autobiographical paper "Screen memories" (1899). The 1899 paper on screen memories contains contradictions and incoherences. Freud's correspondence allows us to reconstruct what may be the immediate triggers for Freud's recollections of the screen memory of the meadow with the yellow flowers described in 1899. Freud's…

  • Who's the Author of Freud's Works? A Confutation of "A Critique of Freud's Pre-analytic and Psychoanalytic Dream-theory" by Adolf Grünbaum

    This work shows how Grunbaum’s critique, "Manifest Dream-Content a Compromise-Formation with Repressed Wishes. A critique of Freud's pre-analytic and psychanalytic dream-theory" is wholly inconsistent. First, it shows that Freud’s theory of dreams as wishfulfillment was not based on the neurophysiological model of the "Project for a Scientific Psychology", as Grunbaum suggested.. Further, his reading of this text rests on four very serious conceptual confusions: 1) confusion between sleep and dream; 2) confusion between structure and function; 3) confusion between real…

  • Freud en de archeologie

    Download full Text