SIGMUND FREUD AND ME

[RonPrice]

Philip Rieff(1922-2006) was an American sociologist and cultural critic who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1992. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959). In that book Rieff argued that the father of psychoanalysis was also a moralist, and a conservative one at that: conservative in both his personal mores and in his deep seated conviction that self-restraint is essential to civilization. In his science, Freud prescribed a vision of the good life and in that regard he was, for all his sneering at philosophy, a member of the Socrates guild.

Socrates’s was famous for many ideas of which “know thyself” was, arguably, the most well-known. It may come as a surprise to some philosophers that self-knowledge requires more than intellectual self-examination. It demands knowing something about one’s feelings. In my experience philosophers are, in general, not the most emotionally attuned individuals. Many are prone to treat the ebb and flow of feelings as though one’s passions were nothing but impediments to reason. Freud, more than the sage of Athens, grasped the moral importance of emotional self-transparency. Like the Greek tragedians, but in a language that did not require an ear for poetry, he reminded us of how difficult it is to own kinship with a whole range of emotions.

If there were one wisp of wisdom that we could pluck from the mind of Freud it might be this: those who are unaware of their feelings risk becoming puppets of those feelings. We need to recognize the possibility that our commitments might not be based as much upon reason as on unacknowledged emotions and desires. No group has appropriated this fundamental Freudian point more than the advertising industry.

Like Kierkegaard(1813-1855), Freud endlessly mucked around in the morass of anxiety and depression and, like many other great explorers of the mind, was often accused of being too depressing. Yet, when pressed to provide some positive vision of health, Freud more than once implied that what is fundamental to happiness is the ability to love and work; that is, to be able to invest in something other than yourself. In an age often daubed in Freudian terms as “narcissistic” and which, in part thanks to Freud, has come to deify the self, getting outside of one’s own orbit might be a wise and practical ideal.-Ron Price with thanks to Gordon Marino, Freud as Philosopher, 9 October 2011, The New York Times.

Freud had been gone for 20 years
when your book was published;1 &
I had just joined the Baha’i Faith in
the midst of a world of sport, and a
small town smugness that saw truth
only to be found in that holy trinity
of: Catholic, Protestant, and Jew.

1 Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, 1959.
Ron Price
5 June 2012