Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_109zihx in philosophy
I like that, it is ironic he spent an inordinate amount of time alone away from the collective in his life. His personal struggle seemed to be reconciling the collective and the individual I never thought of him as focused particularly on either, it’s a good perspective to consider.
thank you :)
"To annihilate or not to annihilate... that seems to be the question." To quote Hamletish.
Arguably, psychoanalysis does better with sociology than individual psychology.
I feel that way from reading Freud (and reading about Jung) - he describes patterns derived by observing his patients/friends/Greek myths (e.g. Achilles-Agamemnon dynamic in the Iliad is a great example of the OC dynamic) as universals, but in light of evidence that hunter-gatherers may not possess OC (or at least that they certainly appear to carry far less familial resentment), we should really consider that OC is a cultural phenomenon that catalyzed the development of civilization (less fucking the mother part, more killing the father / internalizing his tyranny / competition / forceful patriarchy) and NOT a biological absolute.
He makes a very strong case as to how an individual’s mental illnesses and neuroses are indeed largely a function of social factors.
Also, I’ve only read assorted Nietzsche (like 600 pages or so), I think he certainly thinks of himself as an individualist - the cure to the Death of God and the key to being an Übermensch being a willingness to create one’s own code of ethics and conduct, free of a need to be controlled by a powerful, universalizing source of ethics external to one’s self.
This is also why Adorno & Horkheimer call him an Enlightenment extremist in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Whose psychoanalysis? It is a broad field with only a common theme of the unconscious. Jung was largely sociological and would admit so. His main theory was of the "collective unconscious" and its archetypes which he took from cultural anthropology. Freud was as well in his drawing on Greek myths and pholsophers like nietzche. But ultimately most of what Freud (and probably jung) taught (including OC) was complete bullshit. We still credit Freud as the father of psychology because he introduced the concepts of the unconscious, internal conflicts, defense mechanisms and talk therapy. That's about it.
And most of what nietzche said was bullshit too and internally inconsistent. He contradicts himself and rambles to no end. If he seems to give competing views it's because his views are indeed at odds with one another.
Yes, basically he wants human embrace their nature and have their own atonement
I feel this is often overlooked in discussing Nietzsche. Creating one's own ethics doesn't happen in a vacuum. It involves separating from a previous set of values, and that has to be dealt with and can be hard. our own salvation is important too. Not just adopting new paradigms.
Why do you say Nietzsche focuses more on the collective than the individual?
I wish this was more widely understood...
And here I thought Sigmund Freud was the “Father of Psychoanalysis.” Author maybe needs a different title to bestow on Nietzsche. Also didn’t realize that Nietzsche predates Freud by such a wide margin.
I haven't really read anything by Freud, but I'm a fan of Nietzsche. I've heard in a few lectures that some of Freud's ideas bear a strong resemblance to those of Nietzsche, but that he denied having read him.
Interestingly, this article seems to corroborate this, and further suggests that he was intentionally lying. Maybe he should share the title a little.
That is interesting. I was a psychology major, so I’m more familiar with Freud than Nietzsche. Didn’t realize he predated Freud by decades!
Haha and I studied philosophy but not psychology! (Okay it was just a minor, but I focused on the classics and German existentialism).
Fun crossover episode we just had.
Right? It’s neat to see the other side of the coin.
Didn't realize there were psych departments still giving air to that old fraud.
Well to be fair I graduated a few years back. And most of what was covered on Freud was general history of psychology and references to general theories.
Fairish enough.
(and now that I think to it, even in my department they actually have a dedicated track for "diehard admirers" tbhh)
Can I ask what is the problem with him? Is his work not at least as worth study as that of other thinkers who did or believed terrible things, but who have nonetheless been widely influential to our world and intellectual history?
EDIT: Genuine question, I am not trying to bait anyone or debate cancel culture, I am just curious about your take.
The question was legitimate, your edit sounds actually way more worrisome if any...
Anyhow, the problem is both that he was an absolutely poor scholar, if not even a liar, and that the crap he was pushing was contrivedly bigot (for as much as, I guess it wasn't particularly more than the average guy of the time).
https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/liu10/files/2010/08/KPopper_Falsification.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Freud_Was_Wrong
Perhaps you can credit him for being enough of a successful snakeoil salesman (with all its flashy sexualized everything) to break certain taboos of the day around mental health. Which is.. mhh, kinda positive I guess?
But everything else was just psychobabble. His fame basically halved the psychological knowledge production for 70% of a century, and especially in a philosophical sub his name should be proscribed except to underline how science doesn't work and shouldn't happen.
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Do we not still use the concept of the id, superego and ego?
Those have bore out over and over in and outside of psychoanalytic theory. I just love how everybody has been jumping on the anti-Freud bandwagon for the last 30'40, years it's really laughable.
I'm so disappointed in the field that I wanted so to enter. It's obviously now driven by social trends and political party subgroups. Very sad.
> Do we not still use the concept of the id, superego and ego?
No. The modern consensus in psychology absolutely does not support in any way, the existence of an ID, Ego, or Superego.
I'm pretty sure the previous poster made it clear that the concept of these is so ingrained now in the modern thinking of psychology that we don't even recognize that anymore. The concept of the three actually exist not only Within the ideas of psychoanalysis but other treatment modalities as well. I remember my ex-husband in treatment coming home asking me about the" King baby" Id as was trying to be explained to him in substance abuse counseling. These were not trained psychologists they were treatment counselors.
Where is your evidence that these ideas are at all ingrained in modern psychology? 3 discrete parts of the subconscious, each with their own purpose in guiding your behavior sounds like a very specific hypothesis and I have never encountered any modern psychology who purports that there is any evidence of it.
>And these were not trained psychologists they were treatment counselors
You are missing the conclusion that they believed in this unsupported hypothesis because they are not actual psychologists. Why would I trust them to actually know real psychology if they aren’t even psychologists!
They were trained by psychologists, genius. 🙄
All's I did was Google personality theory and the first one that came up with psychoanalytic which does contain id ego and the superego so I think you're wrong 🤷♀️
How do you know they were trained by psychologists? All the psychologists I know, people who were actually working in scientific research, said that Freud was never that important to actual psychology and was always much more popular in the public consciousness. Wilhelm Wundt and William James are the early pioneers of scientific psychology.
And googling personality test is not a good way to judge the support of scientific theories, as anyone intelligent might tell you.
I didn't Google personality test I Googled personality theory.
I would suggest that you look up the required studies of a substance abuse counselor to answer your own question.
I believe I was discussing psychoanalytic theory as opposed to clinical research.
So are you denying that the concept of the ego, superego, and id are part of the mainstream modern thinking about personality?
> So are you denying that the concept of the ego, superego, and id are not part of the mainstream modern thinking about personality?
You have a double negative there, but yes, I am denying that modern psychology supports the hypothesis of an id, ego, or superego.
And I corrected prior to 3 minutes, how desperate are you to discredit rather than discuss?
Do you not get the very idea of a subconscious is due to Freud? Thanks for showing a perfect example of the modern psych student who tries to act like Freud wasn't a major part of the beginning of psychology.
It is absolutely amazing that you are both engaging in ad hominem attacks in the Philosophy subreddit, and also seem to think that Freud was the originator of the subconscious/unconscious. He was not, which a cursory google search, which you apparently use to judge the validity of scientific theories, would show you.
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OH AND FYI: SUBCONSCIOUS DOES NOT = UNCONSCIOUS- PSYCH 101.
> Do we not still use the concept of the id, superego and ego?
No, not even tangentially.
> I just love how everybody has been jumping on the anti-Freud bandwagon for the last 30'40, years it's really laughable.
It's really laughable that it took so long for the cognitive revolution to spread.
> I'm so disappointed in the field that I wanted so to enter. It's obviously now driven by social trends and political party subgroups.
You meant peer-review, reproducibility and statistical rigour, dude. Wtf.
wtf is right. Black and white thinking is the curse of this time.
Do they not teach now that Research and Psychology are different than counseling and talk therapy? Different treatments, different environments for treatments... ignorance abounds, per usual. Treatments vs theory and self report "science"?
YMMV and wokism won't heal your mind, tbh.
> Do they not teach now that Research and Psychology are different than counseling and talk therapy?
Clinical psychology is and must be based on proper research...
Nobody said that you must tell patients to evaluate their life through a chi-squared test
> Different treatments, different environments for treatments... ignorance abounds, per usual.
That's why you must be accurate.
No goddamn single case studies in a private setting, which.. uh, a single person can fake and call it a day for half a century.
> YMMV and wokism won't heal your mind, tbh.
Wtf^2
I studied psychology a couple of decades back that was still after the book, why freud was wrong.
Many things by freud are still used and accepted, it's not because a lot of his work is debatable or even plain wrong that he didn't lay the groundwork for psychology in general and that he had a major influenece that is still in effect in various fields.
The concept of the id is something that never really went away, and same thing for the ego and its defense mechanisms.
Or the subconscious mind? or traumatic repression?
Misleading and bad beyond belief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind#Controversy_and_criticism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
There are probably thousands of people that were persecuted over this bullshit concept.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind#Controversy_and_criticism
People disagreed, sure, but who's model of the unconscious are you familiar with? Jung's or Franz Brentano's? How often have you seen the idea of the collective unconscious pop up in pop culture?
>There are probably thousands of people that were persecuted over this bullshit concept.
Remember that Freud originally said his patients were likely being molested by their parents, and was forced to walk back those comments after a large amount of public outcry. Also, remember that he was one of the first psychiatrists to renounce the his own sexual fantasy root cause theory in 1905, a good 75 years ahead of the rest of the world.
> People disagreed, sure, but who's model of the unconscious are you familiar with? Jung's or Franz Brentano's?
None of them?
Most educated people today follow Kahneman's dual process theory if any.
But my point was more like the absolute roundabouts that researchers and therapists have to go, because "unconscious" has become an absolutely deleterious concept with no possibility of redeem.
> How often have you seen the idea of the collective unconscious pop up in pop culture?
Jesus F. Christ man. Where in the hell do you think you are? Dr. Oz's den or a somewhat professional sub?
> Remember that Freud originally said his patients were likely being molested by their parents, and was forced to walk back those comments after a large amount of public outcry.
Remember also how there's no damn standard except "anything goes" and everything and its opposite can still be true anyway.
> to renounce the his own sexual fantasy root cause theory
I think you are missing some part of the sentence there...
Thank you!
Everything Freud and Jung got right has been so thoroughly ingrained into modern thought that all we ascribe directly to them now is their failures
Excellent point!
Freud used the term unconscious mind, and thought it functioned in specific ways that modern psychology does not support. And to my knowledge, modern psychology does not support traumatic repression either.
wow ideas evolve over time? no way!
He is no fraud, you just haven't read him!
Remember that Lou-Andreas Salome was a dear friend to Freud and that he had a lot of respect for her, so it is very evident why many of Nietzsche's ideas are in Freud's works.
No doubt and you know what reading Nietzche does to you and can imagine what knowing him intimately would be such an eyeopening; thus her not speaking of any of this to Freud is naive. And so is thinking Freud didnt read Nietzche.
Schopenhauer is another very very similar author to Freud.
Nietsche literally psychoanalyzed himself to death and, strangely, his father seemed to have also. Freud brought similar ideas to clinical psychology (as far as I know), I also don’t believe for a second Freud wasn’t fully aware of Nietzche’s teachings.
No, not literally.
Worth noting it wasn't until Bernays utilized some of Freud's concepts to revolutionize advertising on a social conscious level. He's slimy.
> and further suggests that he was intentionally lying
Like when he was "curing" those women.
I don’t think so. Freud was so much about repression being the root of neurosis. He was for more unbridled expression, more decadence.
Repression is also necessary for the development of culture and art. Repression for Freud wasn’t a good or bad thing, just a psychological phenomenon that could be harmful in certain cases.
e: my tired mind confused repression with instinctual renunciation, sorry!
That's sublimation
Yeah, I’m quite embarrassed for past me. I somehow inserted repression into this passage from The Lacanian Subject by Bruce Fink:
>Freud talks about that loss [of juissance] in terms of “instinctual renunciation” that he considered necessary for all cultural achievement.
Apologies!
In Freud’s terminology what you’re referring to is suppression, which is a conscious decision to compartmentalize in order to achieve specific goals. The psychological profile of Neitzsche would have given Freud a lot to work with, and I don’t think there are many affinities. Their approach to libido, for example, is completely opposite.
Nietzsche is so fundamental to Freud that he routinely lied about never having read Nietzsche because he was scared of finding his theories already present in N's work (which is somewhat true).
Yeah. Another redditor linked an article and just the abstract was illuminating. I had no idea…
Schopenhauer predates both of them, to be honest. Nietzsches draws a lot of his psychology—in particular his theory of drives—directly from Schopenhauer. And a lot of the concepts that both Nietzsche and Freud elucidate, such as repression and rationalisation, are found—albeit to a lesser developed extent—in Schopenhauers works. Not to speak that Freud borrows his theory of sex from Schopenhauer and develops it further.
Thank you. 🏅
Yeah, no shit? Kierkegaard is the father of Existentialism.
Love Sartre, especially his Marxism. But what about Heidegger?
Kierkegaard is my favorite. Nietzsche took his work and changed it quite a bit. Not sure if I agree to the extremes Nietzsche took existentialism towards.
There’s no evidence that Nietzche read Kierkegaard
the translations did not exist in German in Nietzsche's active lifetime, although there is speculation that he may have heard of Kierkegaard's ideas second hand through friends who were known to be well acquainted with him
I can respect Kierkegaard, but I'll always turn to Sarte or Camus when I'm in need.
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When only Camus will do! Absurdly riveting...
Hello. I'm Albert Camus, Of Camus' Own Thoughts For Youse. I'm telling you folks this is amazing, the world's first canned soundbites. knock knock See? Tin. Forget books, forget everything else. Its all meaningless in the face of the Absurd. That is not a bad thing. It simply is.
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Both shit and never went far enough.
you're really lashing out here, huh?
I actually love Nietzsche, especially his nihilism. But I don’t usually associate him that strongly with classical Existentialism. After Kierkegaard, I would say Heidegger would be next.
Whaaat?
No, I disagree
Kierkegaard looked as the existential emptiness of modern life and wanted to turn back...which is silly.
You can't stop progress, that's like trying to paddle against the current
Nietzche said fuck God, God is dead, paddle WITH the current! Become God.
Nietzche's work has actual impact, and is a good framework for the modern man.
I don't think Kierkegaard's answers are real answers to modern people.
They're a lot less different than you'd think. Nietzsche wants you to become God, Kierkegaard wants you to look within and find God already there
Neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche would suggest that one "paddles with the current", both suggest a revolt against modern man to become something neither modern nor past
This is spot on, kierkegaard was the first western non-dualist.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding Kierkegaard’s philosophy if that was your takeaway. He was reacting to record social mobility at the time in his home of Denmark; and wanted to try and convince people in his community to not be impressionable and beholden to other people’s systems of morals and ethics. Instead, he wanted people to pursue understanding of their innermost desires and ambitions, regardless of whether they were popular or considered morally or ethically right (hence: the “teleological suspension of the ethical”).
The lily and the lily of the filed refutes you
I think your write up is overly poetic. It’s certainly true that Freud was inspired by Nietzche. Both Kierkegaard and Nietzche are typically called proto-existentialists, the reason being that they both are arguing about not subjecting to nihilism. Most of his cultural attacks are towards Christianity and Nazisim. The Apollonian and Dionysian is a balance between rationalism and art. I’d have to re-read it, but I think this could be read on an attack to people effectively in the analytic school of thought.
You’re right it’s definitely an attack on analytical philosophy. More generally it’s an attack on rationality in the abstract which also includes the scientific world view, positivism, etc.
Lots of Freud's students ripped Psychology apart, not even knowing where his ideas actually came from. We've been spending decades trying to heal whatever happened between Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Cognitive Therapy regarding human behaviour. In all honestly, hot take, but Psychology is today, what those 3 exposed 150sh years ago. We havent added a single thing.
There's this weird thing in Psychology where the students of great theorist tend to be extremely ignorant of whatever made the "teacher" wise. Freud actually quoted a lot of thinkers in his early works, Jung was incredibely smart too, their theories got extremely deluted with time tho. Their theories got watered down over time, as if his students understood no more than the superficial components of their rhetoric. The words they used are currently interpreted as the word itself, without the relevant epistemological considerations.
As a matter of fact, in psychology we don't read Schopenhauer, Kant, or Nietzsche, we don't even read Plato. We do not revise philosophy of mind and do very little to understand philosophy of science. We are a self sabotaging practice.
I would say it may be worse: psychology today—particular it treats mental illness, the diagnoses of them, ect,.—seems to presuppose a type of equality of the psyche
The best thing that's happened to the field of psychology is moving past Freud...
First of all, what Nietzsche described as the Dionysian, though it has many analogs to freuds idea of the unconscious or the ID, it is not an exact copy, and freud was arguing about completely different strands of thought in a different context. Orthodox methodology in intellectual history tends to eschew this sort of thinking, there’s even a term for it:teleological history. Just because they sound similar doesn’t mean it’s the same thing, and there’s good reason for considering freud the father of psychoanalysis. The conscious/subconcious dialectic is very different from the Dionysian-Apollonian, in simply terms.
Second, he’s not prescribing the Dionysian counter ideal as something that is innately good by itself. It’s the balancing of both that is required, and that’s very different from an explicit endorsement of the Dionysian.
Jung writes about this and is beautiful
A lot of my marginalia when reading BGE was just "Freud?" "Freud?"
If this is the case then he would have to share that title with Carl Gustav Jung.
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What do you mean?
I really should probably finish that lil book of his at some point...
what a shit headline
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I am a Nietzsche hater, so probably biased. But I don't view him as the Father of anything.
I used to hate Nietzsche a lot more, because I think his writing is a mess. But as I have gotten older I appreciate him more than I used to.
I still think his philosophy is trash as a whole. But now I see him more as a guy who was pretty smart and very creative and also had a way of writing that captured the imagination. Some of his stuff was where philosophy was heading anyway, and someone else would have said it or had already said but Nietzsche wrote it cooler. And some of his stuff is cool ideas that do not form a coherent whole and were poorly expounded on. But he did have a shit ton of cool ideas.
It makes him very thought provoking and a good seed planter. And easy for the philosophers (both good and bad) who followed to borrow bits and pieces from him.
So I see him as influential to a whole ton of modern thought-- maybe more than any other philosopher-- while at the same time the father of none.
Not a single coherent argument against any of Nietzsche‘s ideas.
If you want coherent arguments, why are you reading Nietzsche?
To me, he's a concept guy. Like Will to Power. Is is it just a metaphorical concept or does it actually exist? If it exists, does it exist metaphysically or as a psychological concept? Nietszche never clarifies. Eternal recurrence is another one. There are dozens.
That said, will to power is an interesting and potentially useful concept. Which is why I think Nietzsche influenced a lot of schools of thought. He's got a shit ton of concepts that allow people to pick and choose which ones work and how to interpret them. But it's up to those others to do the heavy lifting.
It is dishonest to claim that Nietzsche did not formulate coherent arguments.
A short list of scholars that disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of „Nietzsche’s arguments being incoherent“:
And lastly, some ReAl PhIlOsOpHeRs:
Derrida Deleuze Foucault
I can go on, if you really want to die on that hill.
Father of nazism
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I could never read Nietzsche. I can't tolerate his attitude. He's so pointedly bombastic, and even deliberately boorish at times. It just comes off as nasty and crude. I know that his sister distorted him; I understand that the right-wingers misunderstand him. But still, the aggression that repels me just emanates from his writing itself, constantly, even in good translations like Kaufmann's.
That said, I figure there must be some substance there, since so many postmodern figures took such interest in him. I'm interested to sometime read the Nietzsche interpretations from Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault.
So much of his writing is ironic and a lot of it is playful exaggeration. His books (as a German reader) are easily some of the greatest pieces of writing in the German language. Countless philosophers, artists and writers concur. Thomas Mann would be an example. I‘m sorry but describing his writing as „deliberately boorish“ or „nasty/crude“ is irritating, if not plain wrong.
Is there any good reason for continuing to use the word "decadence" to describe our problems? Given its history, its importance to postwar fascist philosophy, and its current use as a right wing dog whistle for a range of culturally progressive things such as trans rights, I'd think we'd be moving past it, or searching for an alternative language to talk about cultural/social decline.
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that's very nice, dear
Looking at his profile, seems he's been off his meds for quite a while...
Icy_Violinist_2781 t1_j42b2bg wrote
Nietzsche focuses more on the collective than the individual soul though; he was a fusion of identities and disciplines: philosopher, poet, psychologist, historian, sociologist, theologian...
Also, this is beautiful <3
"the synthesis of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Not the overgrown reason or oppressive morality of the excessive Apollonian. And not "that horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty" that characterised much of the Dionysian festivals of the ancient world. Nietzsche's ideal is the fusion of these two forces. The Apollonian as the contained — as the sails; the Dionysian as the great dynamic natural force infusing this container and filling these sails. The goal is a fusion of the conscious and unconscious that leaves us with a deep love of life in all its suffering and its joys."