Contemporary era · 1856–1939

Sigmund Freud

The explorer of the unconscious

Psychoanalysis

Biography

A Viennese physician and neurologist, he founded psychoanalysis. Of Jewish origin, he fled to London in 1938 after the Nazi annexation of Austria.

Worldview

Most of psychic life is unconscious; the ego is "not master in its own house", squeezed between id and superego. Dreams, slips and symptoms reveal repressed desires. Civilisation demands instinctual renunciation and breeds discontent; Eros and Thanatos contend for humanity.

Core positions

The ego is not master in its own house
The dream is the fulfilment of a wish
Civilisation breeds discontent
Religion is an illusion

Major works

The Interpretation of Dreams
Civilization and Its Discontents
The Future of an Illusion
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
The Ego and the Id

Debate style

Clinical and interpretive: reads discourse as symptom, seeks the repressed.

Interprets opposing positions as rationalisations of desires and fears; uses clinical cases and myths.

Vocabulary

unconsciousrepressionidegosuperegodriveEros and Thanatos

Known disagreements

Jean-Paul Sartre — Sartre denies the unconscious and speaks of bad faith
René Descartes — Consciousness is not transparent to itself

Debates in the Agora

Has not yet taken part in a debate.