3.

Freud, Enlightenment and Suspicion (400 words)

(a) In his text ‘A Difficulty on the Path to Psychoanalysis’ Freud aligns his own theory
with those of Copernicus and Darwin. Explain the common characteristics and the
differences that he sees between the three theories.

In his text A Difficulty on the Path to Psychoanalysis, Freud refers to Copernicus and Darwin
when presenting the so-called ‘three blows’: scientific discoveries which revolutionized man’s
perception of the world and clashed with his primitive sense of omnipotence. The first of these
blows is the Cosmological blow which is accredited to Copernicus but had been described by
others before him. This blow is associated with the destruction of the narcissist belief that man
was standing on a privileged position at the center of the universe. Mankind was thought to have
a predominant role in the universe, this first blow pointed out how naive that belief was.
This primitive sense of predominance was not only extended to the world mankind lived in, but
also to the creatures that lived within it. ‘Over the course of the development of civilization man
acquires a dominating position over his fellow-creatures in the animal kingdom’. This
presumption was once again cracked, this time by the Biological blow. Darwin’s discoveries
showed men as descents of animals and for no reason superior to them. Linking these events to
his work allows Freud to show how our primitive (and childish) beliefs were shaped by our
fallacious perception of the world surrounding us, and not based on facts describing the world in
its actual form.

(b) Would you call psychoanalysis a continuation or a break with the goals of the
scientific revolution and the Enlightenment? Explain your answer and use the concept of
suspicion in your answer.

Whether or not Psychoanalysis can be considered a science has been discussed in many
papers. In the text mentioned above, Freud himself gives an idea of his opinion on the matter:
‘Our one-sideness is like that of the chemist, who traces all compounds back to the force of
chemical attraction. He is not on that account denying the force of gravity; he leaves that to the
physicist to deal with’. He defines psychoanalysis as a science whose core is sexual instinct.
A more elaborated view of the matter is the one of Thomas Kuhn. He analyzed the positivists
and Popper’s opposite definitions of science and uses them to define psychoanalysis. Although
he denied psychoanalysis as a science, he argues that natural sciences involve interpretation
just as human and social sciences do, one difference is that hermeneutic re-interpretation, the
search for new and deeper interpretations, is the essence of many social scientific enterprises.
In his words: ‘Re-interpretation is the result of a scientific revolution and is typically resisted
rather than actively sought’.
Whether or not a science, Psychoanalysis has its founding in the idea of false consciousness
and uses the concept of suspicion to re-interpret our thought as deeply influenced by our
subconscious. In this sense Psychoanalysis could be considered as a continuation of the
previous scientific discoveries, a step forward to a more conscious scientific system. We could
see it as an improvement in the sense of including a more sharp view of consciousness in a
process that is lead by consciousness.
(c) Freud has acknowledged, on several occasions, the similarity between Nietzsche's
thought and his own. Would you agree with Freud? Why (not)? Base your answer on a
short comparison between the two.

Even though Freud said he has never read Nietzsche’s works, several facts bring the two
masters closed to each other. First of all both Freud and Nietzsche lived in the second half of the
19th century. Paul-Laurent defined this as ‘strange contemporaneity’, implying that Freud is
‘bombarded with Nietzschean solicitations; everywhere around him, he discovers Nietzsche’.
Being both masters of suspicion, Freud and Nietzsche’s conclusions share a common core-
concept: false consciousness and the consecutive suspicion of the self. Both philosopher
describe how repression pushes felling and thoughts that are hard to accept into the
unconscious. The idea that these repressed instinctual drives later are manifested in disguised
ways and the importance of dreams are also concepts common to both masters.
Needs conclusion

4. Essay question (600 words)

Write a short essay on one of three topics mentioned below. Give your interpretation of
the topic of your choice and show how/why it plays a role in the theories of one, or
several, of the Master(s) of suspicion.
Use at least 2 texts from the compulsory literature and at least 2 texts from the
additional literature. Write your essay with an interested, but unspecialized audience in
mind. You have a great deal of freedom in choosing how to approach the topic of your
choice. You will be graded on your comprehension of the literature used and overall
argumentation.
Topic chosen:
1. the relationship between suspicion and language
2. the relationship between suspicion and history
3. the relationship between suspicion and science