In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph

[Ian Livingston]

> Freud today:
>
> Conception of the mind and subconscious
> Psychoanalysis in film, literature, music, TV, photography
> Talking Therapy
> The Couch
> The Life and Death instincts
> Defense mechanisms
> Freudian slips (parapraxis)
> Dreams as "royal road to the unconscious"
> Civilization and its discontents in the 20th Century (various Holocausts)
> Atheism movement (The Future Of An Illusion)
>

Quite right. I mean, assuming your "today" is referring to the 20th
C., although his ideas regarding psychoanalysis began to drift out of
clinical practice and academic study in the field of psychology during
the 1970s.

> Uh, also... To say something like, F was wrong about sex because he suffered from obsession, well, that's a
> Freudian argument right there. See? Freud did or didn't do something he wasn't consciously aware of because of
> unconscious motivations. That's a Freudian idea.

It appears my sentence confused you on this point. My fault entirely
for being so casual. I did not intend to say that Freud was wrong
because of his sexual obsessions. The point of this wry sentence was
that these two factors, that he was very wrong about human psychology
(like most of us are), and that he also suffered sexual obsessions
(like most folks do) were contributing factors that lead current
literary types to favor the man and his ideas. His influence with
Lacan, Zizek, and others of the psychoanalytic school of social and
literary criticism, cannot be dismissed. That unconscious forces
direct human action is an ancient idea Freud rightly emphasized.

His suggestions regarding biochemistry, borrowed from Baldwin, Piaget,
maybe Pavlov, and others, do seem to have had influence in the field,
but it's hard to say whether that is because he offered the arguments
or because others did before and after him, as well as during his
lifetime. There is unquestionably an overemphasis on chemistry these
days, but responsible clinicians understand that the mind, leaving
aside the arguments about body / mind dichotomy, cannot be treated by
chemicals alone.

Freud is important, he was just consistently mistaken, perhaps because
his sampling was so limited. Jung's studies included a much broader
and deeper sampling of humans, including people from all walks of
life, and of varying degrees of psychological development and
pathology--including a deep and enduring self-analysis. That last is
not a recommended practice. Most psychologists these days understand
that the mind is dangerous neighborhood and that one ought not walk
those streets alone.

The point of my post, though, was that people often freely embrace and
endorse Freud's influence in literature while dismissing Jung. My
surmise is that the reason for that is that all they know about Jung
is the material, such as archetypes, that New Agers fluffed into angel
food.


On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 10:20 AM, Jude Bloom <jude at bloomradio.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 14, 2012, at 10:44 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>
>> But the literary Everybody seems to love Freud. Maybe that's because
>> he was so wrong about people, maybe it's because he smoked big cigars
>> and suffered sexual obsessions....
>>
>> Btw, while Freud's ideas are mostly absent from current trends in
>> psychology, a number of the tools Jung developed remain in play,
>> evolving as more information comes to light.
>
>
>
> Seriously?
>
> Freud today:
>
> Conception of the mind and subconscious
> Psychoanalysis in film, literature, music, TV, photography
> Talking Therapy
> The Couch
> The Life and Death instincts
> Defense mechanisms
> Freudian slips (parapraxis)
> Dreams as "royal road to the unconscious"
> Civilization and its discontents in the 20th Century (various Holocausts)
> Atheism movement (The Future Of An Illusion)
>
>
> Bloom (no relation) said that Freud was the most important essayist since Montaigne. He survives as an essayist and philosopher, although not a scientist. In F's defense, they didn't have much brain science back then. Interesting to note that as psychology becomes more and more 'physically' based — neurochemicals, brain structures, etc. — it comes back closer to Freud, who argued for a biological basis of everything mental.
>
> Uh, also... To say something like, F was wrong about sex because he suffered from obsession, well, that's a Freudian argument right there. See? Freud did or didn't do something he wasn't consciously aware of because of unconscious motivations. That's a Freudian idea.
>
> Yes I know Freud didn't invent much of this stuff — a lot of it is in Plato — but our very language and idea of the mental is Freudian now.  You run across archetypes and stuff every once in a while, but I don't see 1/10 as much Jung in culture — or in psychology — as Freud.



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant