Sigmund Freud - "Totem and Taboo"

Chapter 1: “The Horror of Incest”

Freud begins Totem and Taboo by postulating an equation between the psychological development of primitives (the earliest human societies, living in the simplest forms of social organization), savages (contemporary human societies who lack any sense of modern culture and live under similarly simple forms of social organization), and neurotic patients, particularly children (again, not doing scare quotes, too many instances of this and Freud uses them in a technical sense, but this starts off on a nice note, eh?). This tripartite equation Freud uses to resolve a paradox: although one might expect that primitive and savage societies would have fittingly primitive and savage sexual ethics (ie. none), one finds upon examination that these societies “set before themselves with the most scrupulous care and the most painful severity of avoiding incestuous relations. Indeed, their whole social organization seems to serve that purpose or to have been brought into relation with its attainment.” (4)

Primitive and savage societies have equivalent forms of social and religious organization, namely totemism. The social border of each tribe is identification with a particular totem animal, after which the tribe names itself, and each individual within the tribe is related in a form of social identification stronger than blood ties. The totem animal is defined as the father and guardian spirit of the tribe, and each member is under obligation not to kill or eat it, except on ceremonial occasions. For Freud, however, the most interesting practice of totemism is exogamy, the forbidding of sexual relations between individuals sharing a totem. Nothing in the concept of totem stands as justification for this practice, and appears to have “nothing to do with totemism, but became attached to it (without there being any underlying connection) at some time when marriage restrictions became necessary.” (7)

Four further facts regarding totemism pique Freud’s curiosity:

1. Violation of exogamy, or incest, is punished by the whole community, as opposed to other violations of totemic codes, suggesting that the punish expiates some danger that threatens the entire community.
2. Marriages that may result in children as much as passing affairs unlikely to result in children are equally punished, indicating that there is no practical basis for exogamy.
3. Although totems are hereditary and so apply to all members within a tribe,
4. Exogamic rules seem designed particularly to prevent unions between a man and his mother and/or sisters. All women of the tribe are treated as if they were blood relatives.

From the preceding Freud concludes that “these savages have an unusually great horror of incest, or are sensitive on the subject to an unusual degree, and that they combine this with a peculiarity which remains obscure to us – of replacing real blood-relationship by totem kinship.” (9) However, at certain approved ceremonies, incest is permitted. This situation is complicated by the further institution of marriage phratries, subgroups within and between tribes which are themselves exogamous. So for instance, if Daniel the Savage (new nickname, please) marries into a phratry, the offspring of that marriage cannot marry another member of that phratry, even if those phratry members are members of other tribes under different totems.

Furthermore, strict practices were undertaken to prevent even seeing an individual with whom one might have incest, called avoidances. Freud goes through a litany of these avoidances, often going to extremes (for instance, in several cases if a man notices his sister walking down a road, one of the two has to hide out of sight until the other passes), but noting that prohibitions limiting the activities of men with women in their tribe/phratry are far more severe than those for women. In particular relations between sons and their mothers-in-law are stringently avoided. Freud speculates that this may be explained by reference to separate impulses in the son-in-law and the mother-in-law which in combination with each other foster feelings of sexual desire between the two that must be repressed: the mother-in-law, recognizing that her sexual life with her husband is ebbing, identifies with her daughter in order to vicariously experience sexual desire through her, thus feeling an impulse to fall in love with the son-in-law. For the son-in-law’s part, his original repressed desire for his mother, the first object of his sexual desire, is displaced onto his wife, but the impulse towards mother-love always threatens to reestablish itself, such that he is prone to sexual desires towards his mother-in-law.

Freud extrapolates that repressed incestuous desires between family members are most likely the explanation for all avoidances, according with knowledge garnered from his studies on infantile sexuality. The original choices of love objects for infants are their family members, particularly the boy for his mother and then his sister if he has one, but these are always repressed. In most cases the boy successfully substitutes other women outside the family for these original choices, but neurotic patients suffer from inhibition and regression, or that “he has either failed to get free from the psycho-sexual conditions that prevailed in his childhood or he has returned to them.” (22) In civilized societies, this condition is relatively rare, but Freud speculates that in primitive or savage societies sexual desires have not been as successfully sublimated as in modern Europe, such that the equation between primitives, savages, and neurotics seems to him justified by the available evidence.

Chapters 2 and 3: “Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence,” “Animism, Magic, and the Omnipotence of Thoughts”

Very little of note occurs in these chapters, most of which are spent re-presenting ethnographic data on a multitude of primitive and savage societies already collected in the works of James Frazer and Edward Tylor. In light of this, I will just summarize a few important arguments that Freud makes at various points in these chapters.

Taboo – Freud defines taboo as a condition of being both consecrated and dangerously dirty, and the actions which cause this condition. A taboo is something set apart from common activity and is thus prohibited to most individuals in a society without their knowing or even questioning why, and is thus taken as a matter of course. Special individuals such as kings, priests, and criminals, are taken to be subjected to taboos, and thus are attributed a dangerous and contagious power of pollution. Primitive and savage societies thus create a system of elaborate ceremonial actions to expiate the danger posed by taboos.

Freud outlines a parallel between primitive and savage taboos and the actions of obsessive neurotics, who possess a fear, particularly of touching, certain objects, for fear that they may pollute or defile them. They are equally unable to explain the origin of these fears, and are therefore taken for granted, though they also construct elaborate rituals to allay the fear of touching these prohibited objects. Freud argues that in the case of obsessional neurosis patients at one point possessed a desire for these objects, which had later to be repressed, creating an ambivalent relationship between the neurotic and the object, who experiences the conscious revulsion against touching it while simultaneously a subconscious desire for it. The ritual activities of obsessive neurotics are just as much, then, ways to avoid touching forbidden objects as they are ways of acting out this forbidden touching in a safe way, of coming as close as possible to touching these objects without actually doing so.

Taking his parallel back to primitive and savage taboos, Freud speculates that the earliest taboos must have been “prohibitions of primeval [sic] antiquity which were at some time externally imposed by the previous generation. These prohibitions must have concerned activities towards which there was a strong inclination.” (40) Since the earliest taboos prohibited the killing of the totem animal and incest, Freud concludes that these must have been the two strongest desires of primitive humanity. The communal punishment of transgressors of the two taboos, was for Freud a protection against the tempting quality transgression might have: if one person could follow their unconscious desires and not be punished, why not everybody? The community had to collectively punish breakers of taboos in order to collectively disavow their unconscious desires.

Freud thus neatly summarizes his conclusions:

Taboo is a primeval [sic] prohibition forcibly imposed (by some authority) from outside, and directed against the most powerful longings to which human beings are subject. The desire to violate it persists in their unconscious; those who obey they taboo have an ambivalent attitude to what the taboo prohibits. The magical power that is attributed to taboo is based on the capacity for arousing temptation; and it acts like a contagion because examples are contagious and because the prohibited desire in the unconscious shifts from one thing to another. The fact that the violation of a taboo can be atoned for by a renunciation shows that renunciation lies at the basis of obedience to taboo. (44-45)

Also, without knowledge of the origins of taboos, when they are internalized across generations the force of guilt against violation is felt in the consciousness as conscience, indicating for Freud a probable origin of moral sensibilities.

Overdetermination of psychic events – Primitive and savage communities have an animistic view of the universe, or one dominated by all objects in the universe possess a soul or spiritual being which animates them, and that the universe as a whole is animated by a spiritual being. Animism, however, is merely a way primitive and savage individuals interpret events in the world around them, as opposed to religious and scientific interpretations of the world. Animism, religion, and science, for Freud constitute 3 stages in human intellectual development, based on their interpretations of how nature functions.

Animism, however, bears a striking resemblance to the ways obsessional neurotics and children understand their ability to influence the universe, all of which suffer in Freud’s view from belief in the omnipotence of thoughts, or in other words that human thoughts have efficacious power in the world. Human thoughts and desires can lead to physical results, according to these three groups, thus creating magical belief, that one’s thoughts and intentions can have impacts in the world if combined with proper rituals. In animism such omnipotence humans attribute to themselves, causing Freud to postulate an early form of the theory of narcissism (this book having been written before Freud’s famous paper on narcissism) that underlies this viewpoint, where one overvalues oneself as a love object and attributes to oneself the powers that one later attributes to others. In religious thinking, omnipotence of thinking is attributed to a god or gods who are stand-ins for one’s parents, representing the psychological stage where one’s sexual attraction is directed towards one’s family. And finally in scientific thinking, it is renounced entirely, corresponding to the psychological point where “an individual has reached maturity, has renounced the pleasure principle, adjusted himself to reality and turned to the external world for the object of his desires.” (112-113)

Each of these forms of thinking, however, is organized according to a stage of human psycho-sexual development. The results of an individual’s thinking thus has two determinations: that of their “philosophy of nature” (Freud’s term, 95) and of the psychological process underlying it. Human thinking is thus overdetermined: “at least two reasons can be discovered for each of its products: a reason based on the premises of the system (a reason, then, which may be delusional) and a concealed reason, which must judge to be the truly operative and the real one.” (119)

Chapter 4: “The Return of Totemism in Childhood”

Freud now returns to question the origins of totemism and exogamy, taking as his guide the overdetermination of psychic events to argue that any coherent explanation of their origins (as well as that of religion) must have both a historical and a psychological component. Before embarking on this explanation, Freud notes a few oddities about the history of totemism and exogamy that also guide his explanation: (1) it would appear that totemism is older than the practice of exogamy, (2) the first exogamic sexual restrictions were placed upon a younger generation by the older, and (3) there is no instinctual aversion to incest, but only one that is conditioned by social and familial factors. In fact, as Freud notes, our earliest childhood love objects are consistently incestuous, indicating that events during life and not innate psychology must be the explanation for the horror of incest.

Freud begins the historical component of his explanation by citing Darwin’s theory of the primal horde, the most primitive form of human social organization. Primitive humanity “lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived with several wives by himself, like the Gorilla; for all the natives ‘agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community.” (Dr. Savage, quoted in Darwin, quoted in Freud, 156). As one adult male leads the horde and therefore owns all of the wives, exogamy is a de facto practice for all the other, weaker males. It would seem from this, however, that exogamy then precedes totemism, and so Freud is left with a paradox of which comes first: exogamy or totemism?

The limitations of contemporary historical theories of the origins of totemism and exogamy prompt Freud to add “one single ray of light” from psychoanalysis (157). Primitives, savages, and children seem to behave almost identically towards animals, having no qualms about treating them as friends and equals. At some points, however, children can develop animal phobias against animals for which they had hitherto felt peculiarly great affection. Freud speculates that these phobias are grounded in the child’s (particularly the boy’s) fear of his father, which he displaces onto the animal. Freud locates the origin of these phobias in the Oedipus complex:

The hatred of his father that arises in a boy from rivalry for his mother is no able to achieve uninhibited sway over his mind; it has to content against his old-established affection and admiration for the very same person. The child finds relief from the conflict arising out of this double-sided, this ambivalent emotional attitude towards his father by displacing his hostile and fearful feelings on to a substitute for his father. The displacement cannot, however, bring the conflict to an end, it cannot effect a clear-cut severance between the affectionate and the hostile feelings. On the contrary, the conflict is resumes in relation to the object on to which the displacement has been made: the ambivalence is extended to it. (160)

Freud notes with interest as well that if the totem animal is taken as a substitute for the father, the two taboos of totemism are identical to the crimes of Oedipus: not killing and eating the totem corresponds to the desire to murder one’s father and exogamy proscribes sleeping with his wife, the child’s mother.

Having suggested that the totem animal may be a substitute for the group’s primal father-figure, he then establishes the link between totemism and the sacrificial meal, what he takes to be the earliest religious rite. The flesh and blood of the sacrificial animal was shared in common by each of a tribe’s members who were under religious duty and social obligation to share in the meal. The sacrificial animal could also only be killed on these prescribed festival days, and killing was forbidden on all other days. Killing the sacrificial animal was considered a crime incurring guilt, and so had to be shared by the entire community, thus indicating that the animal was considered a member of the tribe. Since sacrifice was a feature of totemic religions, Freud concludes that the sacrificial animal was in the case of totemic societies in fact none other than the totem animal, the subject of taboos.

The totem animal as sacrificial animal is to be mourned and treated with respect by the tribe. After the sacrificial meal, however, ceremonies took place which expressed joy at the totem animal’s death, allowing for unlimited excess and taboo-breaking. For Freud this demonstrates an emotional ambivalence the members of the tribe felt towards the totem animal, perfectly explainable if the totem animal is taken as a substitute for the father, towards whom the sons feel both love and also competitive hatred.

From here Freud links his psychological observations with the historical theory of the primal horde. The primal horde pre-existed totemism, as a social system, made up only of a father who owned several wives and who drove away his sons in jealously guarding his women. And then, this happened:

One day the brothers who had been driven out came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an end to the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individually. […] Cannibal savages as they were, it goes without saying that they devoured their victim as well as killing him. The violent primal father had doubtless been the feared and envied model of each one of the company of brothers: and in the act of devouring him they accomplished their identification with him, and each one of them acquired a portion of his strength. The totem meal, which is perhaps mankind’s earliest festival, would thus be a repetition and a commemoration of this memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things – of social organization, of moral restrictions and of religion. (176)

The brothers in question had the same feelings of ambivalence all boys have for their fathers in Freud’s Oedipal schema: love and identification with him and his power, but hatred and jealousy for his possessing his mother’s love instead of the child. The act of killing their father resolved their feelings of hatred with him, but in their place guilt arose, shared by each member of the horde, They resolved this ambivalence by renouncing their claim to the women within the horde, creating a de jure out of a de facto practice of exogamy, and by substituting the father with a totem animal on which they placed their ambivalent feelings, creating totemism. Totemism was in essence a covenant with their father, exchanging the father’s protection through the totem animal with their promise not to repeat their act on the totem animal.

Totemism came about as the resolution of ambivalent feelings towards a group’s father-figure. An early rebellion prompts guilt which creates what Freud terms deferred obedience to the patriarchal rule of the father. For Freud, “all later religions are seen to be attempts at solving the same problem. The vary according to the stage of civilization at which they arise and according to the methods which they adopt; but all have the same end in view and are reactions to the same great event with which civilization began and which, since it occurred, has not allowed mankind a moment’s rest.” (180) All religion, according to Freud, are ways of re-experiencing the primal event of the killing of the primal father without actually killing him, as ways to mediate between the contradictory feelings of love and hatred for the father.

The resolution of this ambivalence also gave rise to the first moral codes. The brothers’ act of renouncing their wives not only served the psychological purpose of allaying their guilt for their father’s murder but also the practical purpose of stating that no brother would put himself in the position of the father again. The first moral prohibition was against fratricide, which in Freud’s speculations very quickly became generalized to cover all members of society, who concludes that “society was now based on complicity in the common crime; religion was based on the sense of guilt and remorse attaching to his; while morality was based partly on the exigencies of this society and partly on the penance demanded by the sense of guild.” (181)

Religion developed as the ambivalent feelings of the sons towards their father became further developed. In a sacrificial meal, the father was dually represented as totem animal and god. The gods of early religions were thus fittingly theriomorphic, only to be elevated later on into an anthropomorphic figure as a “more serious effort at atonement than had been the ancient covenant with the totem.” (185) At this point, however, societies also disavowed their guilt by claiming as elements of doctrine that the father-god demanded the sacrificial meal himself. A more efficient method of resolving ambivalence and denying guilt, however, was found with the Christian religion, replacing a primary father god with a son god, Jesus Christ. Here the son not only atones for himself and all other members of the society through his sacrifice, but also makes himself into a god, in the same gesture atoning for the father’s murder and taking his place, finally accomplishing what the original brothers could not. Freud sees a similar condition underlying the drama of Greek tragedy. A Greek tragic hero bears tragic guilt which he inherited from past generations, originating in some rebellion against a divine authority. Although the chorus attempts to sympathize and alleviate the hero’s guilt, it is in fact the hero that allays the guilt and complicity in the original crime of the chorus, and so he takes on all of the tragic guilt for himself as a key element of a tragedy’s plot.

Freud speculates that the guilt from the primal father’s murder was inherited as a disposition towards emotional ambivalence towards parents that could be activated given correct conditions. Thus neurosis also has an overdetermined origin: both in the historical fact of the primal murder, and also in psychological fact. For Freud, all that is required to trigger the emotional ambivalence inherited from ages past is the impulse or wish, which can be felt at any time, to kill the father, and the extent to which individuals feel this can determine the extent to which they feel moral restrictions, and ultimately suffer from neurosis. Freud thus concludes this book by suggesting that the origin of all culture and society resides in the Oedipus complex and the ways it is resolved. Culture sorta like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA35ys91QJU

The Future of an Illusion

Sigmund Freud, 1927

Book I

Freud begins by acknowledging the desire of any cultural critic to make predictions about the future of the civilization, while simultaneously offering the disclaimer that most thinkers will be limited by the scope of their fields, the necessity of gaining distance on the present in order to accurately observe it, and the inevitable corruption of personal prejudice.

He then goes to define human civilization - the sum of all the ways we are raised above animals - in terms of two functions. First, it must protect us from nature, and, second, it must protect us from other men. In these early pages his discussion is largely economic. The distribution of available wealth makes varying levels of instinctual satisfaction possible, by allowing various privileges to certain castes, like the possibility of acquiring someone as a sexual object. Most people are hostile to civilization, viewing it as a burden imposed on the masses by a minority.

The question arises if civilization could be better ordered so that it no longer required coercion and suppression of instincts. Freud thinks not; civilization demands some level of renunciation, given that all people possess certain anti-social impulses. However, it might be possible to lessen the instinctual sacrifices and reconcile men to civilization. Still, given that, as stands, the masses are lazy and aren’t susceptible to reasoned arguments, there is always going to be a need for a powerful elite to keep them in order.

He then turns to the objection that the current state of the masses is a product of an imperfect social system, and could be corrected through education. Here he seems to be simultaneously responding to Marxists, and to Rousseau. Freud asks where we are going to find the wise leaders to teach the masses, given that they belong as much to the imperfect system as the masses. Still, despite his skepticism, he isn’t totally hostile to the idea. While admitting that a certain percentage of mankind will probably always remain pathologically asocial, he expresses the tentative hope that maybe such education might reduce that section of mankind to a minority. That would accomplish a great deal.

Chapter II:

Freud turns form the economic to the psychological, and in doing so defines a number of terms.

frustration: an instinct that can’t be satisfied

prohibition: regulation by which this frustration is established

privation: condition produced by this prohibition.

A distinction must be made between privations affecting everyone (prohibitions of incest, cannibalism, murder), and those affecting a minority. These earliest desires, which we see manifested and renounced in children, create the possibility of other instinctual renunciations. In these renunciations, we see proof of mental progress, namely that prohibitions become internalized and man’s superego takes over to include them within its commandments. In doing so, a child becomes a moral and social being. **It’s worth noting that Freud’s understanding of the superego here is much more positive than in Civilization and its Discontents.** Nonetheless, while these early demands have been largely internalized, the same can’t be said of other moral and cultural demands, as evidenced by the untrustworthiness of men.

Next, Freud makes an interesting shift from his earlier disdain of the masses, and insists that it’s entirely natural for the majority to resent being subject to prohibitions that the elite escape. “It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of lasting existence” (15). Nonetheless, a culture may be united through common cultural ideals. A people tends to idealize their own achievements. This narcissistic pride is confirmed when confronted with a culture that sought excellence in a different area. Cultural ideals and xenophobia are intimately related, and both provide a means of unification and a certain satisfaction. Finally, art may provide compensation for instinctual renunciation, but, unfortunately, is only accessible to the elite.

Chapter III

“In what does the peculiar value of religious ideas lie?” Answer: when man’s ego is seriously threatened by his helplessness in the face of nature, religion humanizes religion, making its forces into something theoretically susceptible to the same means of propitiation as a human. “The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the suffering and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them” (22).

Religion follows the infantile prototype. Weak, helpless, the child needs first the protection of his mother, and then the father. Drawing on memories of originary infantile helplessness, we construct a worldview where some providence watches over us, securing us from harm from others and from nature.

Chapter IV

Here an interlocutor enters. The most important question he poses regards the link between Totem and Taboo, and Future of an Illusion. Why was the father complex central in the earlier work, while infantile helplessness is the main explanation here?

Answer: T&T was a discussion of totemism, not the origin of religion generally. Nonetheless, totemism shares many of the key characteristics of more developed religions, making the two discussions continuous. The discussion of infantile helplessness here merely deepens our insight into the father complex. Now we realize that the ambivalence of the brothers toward the father stemmed in part from their desire for his protection as infants. Once the adult realize he is destined to remain an infant forever, i.e. perpetually in need of a protecting figure, he moves on from animal worship to creating a God with the powers and characteristics of the father.

Chapter V

“Religious ideas are teachings and assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one something one has not discovered for oneself and which lay claim to one’s belief” (31). Religions justify this claim to our belief by 1)reference to tradition (our ancestors believed it) 2) the existence of ancient proofs 3) it is forbidden to raise the question of their authenticity at all.

Freud objects to religious claims because, unlike other assertions which we assent to, they cannot be verified. Moreover, the prohibition against questioning the authority of religious claims seems highly suspicious. If traditions actually could verify their assertions, they would most likely be glad to offer such proofs. That they won’t suggests that they have no proof. Why, Freud wonders, would we accept claims made on such questionable grounds about religions when we wouldn’t do the same for any other topic?

Chapter VI

This seems the key chapter. Here Freud defines religious belief as, “illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind.” An illusion is not necessarily an error or something that is logically impossible; rather, it is a belief derived from human wishes. One could continue to believe in religious doctrines because they can’t be proved or disproved, but knowing as we do that they’re illusions, that would be intellectually irresponsible. Rather, we should acknowledge that it would be very nice if there were some benevolent, protector god, but admit that it’s unlikely to be true, and even less likely that our ancestors, who were infinitely more ignorant than us, would have successfully solved the riddle of the universe.

Chapter VII

Objection: Isn’t this inquiry undermining basic structures that support our civilization? and aren’t these conclusions bound to make life unbearable?

Answer: 1) If people do have a deep need for religion, then nothing Freud can say will take away their belief. 2) This work is not saying anything new, merely adding a psychoanalytic perspective to arguments made earlier and more forcefully. 3) There’s no real proof that religion does make people happy - on the contrary. 4) If religion really is the only thing keeping the masses from murdering, what happens if they find out the elite don’t believe in God? Won’t they just murder indiscriminately, unless stopped by brute force, or unless a new system is put in place?

Chapter VIII

There are clearly rational motivations behind many moral laws. If men weren’t prohibited from murdering, we’d live in a state of constant danger and feuds. It’s better to simply admit those motives, rather than ascribing them to God, or to the God-inspired wisdom of the state. After all, when people begin to protest against the inevitable corruption and imperfection of the state or turn against it when they realize that the God it grounds its authority in doesn’t exist, it will be safer for everyone to realize there are rational reasons to continue holding to its laws.

Moreover, its inevitable that people become disillusioned. If you think of the development of humanity as analogous to that of the individual, you’ll realize that religion is a neurotic illness which we will inevitably turn away from as a natural byproduct of growth.

Chapter IX

Objection: How do you reconcile your earlier assertion that men cannot be ruled by reason with your new plan of replacing the religious foundation of law and morality with a rational one?

Answer: At present, men cannot be guided by reason, but perhaps that is because their intelligence is so deeply damaged by imposing the absurdities of religious education on them as children. If we stop making our children retarded, maybe we’ll have a chance of breeding a new race of men, capable of rationality and overcoming the obsessional neurosis of religion. The experiment is worth trying, particularly as nothing will be imposed on those who are unwilling. Those who wish to cling to belief may.

Chapter X

Objection: this sounds incredibly optimistic for Freud. (Ich stimme dazu!) People need the imposition of some sort of doctrine to lead them from childhood to adulthood, that will allow them to master their emotional impulses. You can’t reason with small children. So wouldn’t Freud essentially be replacing one doctrine or illusion with another, less satisfying one?

Answer: “The weakness of my position does not imply the strengthening of yours.” It may be true that the voice of reason is weak, but it is persistent. And while its primacy may be at some point in the distant future, it is nonetheless not set in the infinitely distant future, like the promises of religion. Moreover, the scientific man is in a better position to handle disappointment if his plan falls through, having already renounced many infantile wishes. If a few expectations are disappointed, he can bear it much better than the religious man. If, however, the scientific worldview were totally debunked, he would be in a similar position to the religious man who realizes God does not exist. However, science has given enough proofs of its success to make that unlikely. So, really, why not at least try for improvement in this world, rather than shunting all of our hopes off into the next life?

"Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices"

Sigmund Freud, 1907

Freud begins by observing that, like others before him, he has long been struck by the similarities between the obsessive actions of those suffering from nervous afflictions and the ritualistic expressions of piety. However, he thinks that the resemblance is more than superficial and can teach us something about the psychological processes of religious life. Obsessive actions are also grouped with obsessive thoughts, ideas, impulses, and the like. Nonetheless, we have no coherent understanding of the root illness and can provide, at best, a phenomenology.

An obsessive act may be a totally quotidian one; what marks it as obsessive is the compulsion to do it in a certain manner/order, the anxiety that attends if it is neglected, and the development of certain prohibitions or hindrances around the act. Any activity may become obsessive if given a certain rhythm with repetition and pauses. There is no sharp distinction between ceremonial and obsessive actions; obsessive actions often develop out of the former.

The greatest difference between the obsessive action and religious ceremony is the private nature of the obsessional neurosis. Such rituals are highly idiosyncratic and can continue for years without anyone knowing, surrounded as they are by an aura of shame and absurdity, while the religious ritual tends to be much more stereotyped (as in prayer), and involves a broad community that legitimates it. However, psychoanalysis reveals the distinction to be largely specious. All private obsessive behaviors turn out to be totally significant, giving, “expression to experiences that are still operative and to thoughts that are cathected with affect,” either through direct or symbolic representation.

Freud gives a few examples: the woman who refuses the best parts of food, directly after refusing sex to her husband (the best part); the woman who always arranges a tablecloth so a maid can see the stain, when the stain is representative of the red ink that her husband spilled on their bed after he proved impotent on their wedding night, etc.

Like the ordinary, pious individual, the neurotic performs these actions without necessarily being conscious of their significance. They may become conscious through analysis, just as there may be clergy members who understand the significance of the religious rituals.

As Freud writes, neatly summing his theory up:
“We may say that the sufferer from compulsions and prohibitions behaves as if he were dominated by a sense of guilt, of which, however, he knows nothing, so that we must call it an unconscious sense of guilt, in spite of the apparent contradiction in terms. This sense of guilt has its source in certain early mental events, but it is constantly being revived by renewed temptations which arise whenever there is a contemporary provocation. Moreover, it occasions a lurking sense of expectant anxiety, an expectation of misfortune, which is linked, through the idea of punishment, with the internal perception of the temptation.”
The ritual is a defensive measure. At its start, the patient may know why he or she performs the ritual and that it is to prevent some misfortune, but never understands the sort of retribution expected. This is parallel to the protestations of the pious that they are miserable sinners, and their consequent turn toward prayers or rituals to forestall divine retribution.

At the bottom of the obsessive action is a repressed instinct, which was given free play in childhood, but then suppressed in later life. In repressing this instinct, a certain “conscientiousness” is created, but it always feels threatened. Thus, it experiences the repressed instinct as a temptation. Anxiety arises in the process of repression and turns into “expectant anxiety,” about the possibility of succumbing to the temptation and/or suffering retribution. Thus, the ritual is a defense against the temptation of the instinct and an effort to ward off retribution. Ultimately, though, it’s an endless battle, and the protective measures of rituals come to seem inadequate. Prohibitions come to replace them, as phobias meant to forestall hysterical attacks.

Rituals, then, represent the conditions in which something that would otherwise be forbidden is permitted. Marriage, for example, represents the conditions in which sex is still allowed. These actions, then, serve as a compromise, allowing some outlet for the repressed instinct, while continuing to deny it full freedom.

Religious rituals work similarly, in that religions form through the denial of specific instincts, often mixed with a sexual component. Freud suggests that the sexual component might be one reason why backsliding into sin is so common in religion. These absurd rituals become central because they are dominated by displacement. The desire is realized through this tiny action; thus, the action comes to be the main thing, pushing everything else aside. Essentially, though, the main difference between private obsessive actions and religion is that neuroses tend to be strictly sexual, while religion aims at the repression of more egoistic instincts generally.

Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams notes (Joyce Crick translation - it is alot less bulky than the Strachey translation)

I. The Scientific Literature on the Problem of Dreams

The short: a brief survey of the basic scientific literature available at the time on the problem of dreams. Punchline: scientists believe dreams are mental froth. They be hella wrong.

The long: although Freud is mostly recapitulating the opinions of others in this chapter, he does offer some hints of what is to come. He writes that "the human mind's endeavor to see everything in coherent connection such that it involuntarily makes good the flaws in its coherence" (41); he is thus already offering up a theory of mind, something that makes coherent, or brings into unity. He also notes the "dream's command of childhood material" (16), how it holds on to "trivialities" (17), how it is difficult to reduce the dream to somatic sources (though many do) (20), that "we should have the greatest reservation about denying our responsibility for sings and crimes committed in dreams" (58), the importance of "involuntary ideas (images)" (60), that, following Robert, "dreams are the excretion of undeveloped thoughts, thoughts nipped in the bud" (66), and finally that there is probably some relation between dreams and mental illnesses. All of this stuff can be skipped over (Freud himself found writing this section to be irritating), as it is basically him trying to be a good scholar/scientist. Nonetheless, the way in which he structures this literature review foreshadows much of what is to come.

II. The Method of Interpreting Dreams

The short: Dream-interpretation en detail, not en masse. Foundational dream of Irma's injection.

The long: there are two ways of interpreting a dream: 1) take the dream content as a whole and replace the symbols to make sense (symbolic interpretation), or else 2) start with the symbols and try to translate them to make a coherent text (decoding interpretation). Freud basically opts for the latter, interpretation en detail, not en masse, with the caveat that there is no "fixed key" for decoding (83).

In this chapter he gives a pretty clear description of his technique: "I want [the patient] to do two things: to pay attention to his psychical perceptions more intently, and to switch off the critical faculty he normally uses to sift the thoughts arising in him" (81). This is free-association in a nutshell. He says you can always tell if someone is trying to hard by a "tense expression" (81). He wants his patients to get in that "right-before-bed" mood.

He then launches in to the famous dream of Irma's injection. The basic plot: Freud dreams that he examines his patient Irma with his rival Otto, Otto's rival Leopold, and their superior Dr. M. He realizes that something organic has been overlooked (which Dr. M confirms), and that this has resulted from an injection that Otto had given her. Freud's interpretation is that the dream's content is a wish-fulfillment in that it blames Irma's illness on Otto. "I am not to blame for Irma but Otto is" (94).

Note: Freud introduces the "broken kettle" joke on page 96.

III. The Dream is a Wish-Fulfillment

Everyone knows that you can't do everything you want to do. Dreams replace these unexpressed actions (99). What does a good dream of? Corn (105). Plain and simple.

Freud has some interesting comments on children in this chapter: "Child psychology is in my opinion destined to perform a service for the psychology of adults," (102) but then on pg. 105 shows just how far off he is from Three Essays: "If we consider childhood a happy time because it does not yet know sexual desire...." He does talk about "children being aroused by food," however, a precursor to the oral stage.

IV. Dream-Distortion

Here Freud distinguishes between the manifest dream-content and the latent dream-thought as separated by the dream-work (107). The tendency of the dream-content to require interpretation (that is, the revelation of the dream-thought) is called dream-distortion (107). Freud posits two psychical forces to explain this distortion: one which forms the wish (Ucs), and one which censors it (Pcs) (113). The stricter the censorship, the more far-reaching the disguise (113).

In this chapter Freud has the dream of a long, yellow face, a composite of his uncle Josef and two of his colleagues, R and N. In real life, Freud likes both R and N quite a bit, but thinks of his uncle as a numbskull and a criminal. His interpretation of the dream is that he wants to associate R and N with a numbskull/criminal because they are both Jews up for the same "Professor Extraordinarus" position that Freud is up for, and he wants a way to put some distance between himself and his colleagues, as if to say, "I am not like them and I can get this position."

Another important dream in this chapter is the lady who dreams of bring frustrated by not being able to have a dinner party because she has nothing but salmon in the house. She knows that if she had a dinner party, a friend of hers would come who is attractive to her husband, and Freud interprets her dream to mean that she would rather not have a dinner party than offer up occasion for her friend to interact with her husband. But on a second level, the woman is also identifying with her friend, as her friend's favorite dish is smoked salmon. At yet a third level, this lady had wanted to prove Freud's wish-fulfillment theory wrong, and her dream was a wish-fulfillment in that sense as well!

There is finally the dream of the woman who dreams of her son Karl in a coffin in a similar manner to her son Otto, who had actually died. Freud takes it that the woman is not wishing that Karl and not Otto had died (the seemingly obvious interpretation), but that she could again see a man who was at Otto's funeral. Dubious!

Freud ends the chapter with a concise formulation: The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish (124).

V. The Material and Sources of Dreams

(a) Recent and Insignificant Material in Dreams: the dream always contains material from the day just past, the day's residue. In probably the most elaborate explanation in the book, Freud provides evidence of this with his "botanical monograph" dream (p. 129), which is an amazing exercise in association. Why do we include seemingly trivial material from the day just past in our dreams? By attaching themselves on to innocuous ideas, repressed affects can get by the censoring agency and find expression. Nothing is actually innocuous: we do not let mere trifles disrupt our sleep (140).

Freud also introduces here the idea that the dream "obeys a compulsion to form a unity out of [two or more experiences]" (137). In other words, there is something about the psychic apparatus that both merges/condenses together and displaces the psychically valuable for the trivial.

(b) Material from Infancy as a Source of Dreams: Freud says that we always "find the active involvement of childhood experiences in dreams whose content would in no way lead us to suspect it" (146). "We find the child, with its impulses, living on in the dream" (147). Freud talks about his own childhood ambitions and longings (for Rome, in particular). As in all interpretation, one must uncover the scene of infancy, which "is represented in the manifest dream-content only by an allusion" (152).

(c) The Somatic Sources of Dreams: Do dreams come from the stomach? Yes, they have somatic factors, but "the motivation for dreaming" lies "outside the somatic sources of stimulus" (173). He takes as an example his dream of riding a grey horse. At the time, he had an apple-sized abscess on his perinium (177). Yes. Apple-sized. At first glance, this dream is somatic in origin, for if he is able to ride a horse, he no longer has the abscess. But following the details of the dream back, he finds his childhood competitions with his nephews. The dream does have one important somatic function though: "the dream is the guardian of sleep, not its disturber" (180). When the dream incorporates a light shined into one's bedroom into the dream, it is to keep the sleeper from waking up.

(d) Typical Dreams:

Freud examines a few typical dreams, including exhibition-dreams, those of nakedness, where the wish is expressed by changing the "real" affect associated with it into its opposite: so instead of being excited by it, one is embarrassed. Instead of revealing oneself to one's family, one is usually naked in front of strangers.

He then talks about death dreams. He makes it clear that when we dream of someone's death, we do not really wish for that person to be dead (a dubious claim). We should trace the affect back to the latent thought and not the manifest content, after all. Nonetheless, he does believe that although we wouldn't wish ill will on them today, many of us still carry childhood wishes to hurt our family, our siblings in particular.

But he understands that he's on shaky ground now, and turns to mythology and tragedy to justify his discussion. Look at the Greek Gods: what violence! He then introduces the Oedipus myth on pg. 198: "the girl's first affection is for her father, and the boy's first infant desire is for his mother. Thus the father becomes an intrusive rival for the boy, as the mother does for the girl, and we have already explained in the case of siblings how little the child needs for this feeling to lead to a death-wish" (198). (Freud had explained that children easily wish death upon others because they do not understand the gravity of its consequences, the forever-ness of it.)

In an important footnote on pg. 204, Freud explains Hamlet in terms of the Oedipus complex: Hamlet is paralyzed in action because "he cannot take revenge on the man who removed his father and took the latter's place beside his mother" because this man, his uncle, "shows him his own repressed infant wishes realized" (204).

Freud ends by noting the self-centered-ness of dreams (an expression of the influence of childhood) (205). In a footnote on pg. 206, also, "the sheer size, the excessive abundance, scale, and exaggeration of dreams, could be an infantile characteristic" (206).

VI. The Dream-Work

The dream-work is why the dream requires interpretation. "The dream is a picture-puzzle of this kind, and our predecessors in the field of dream-interpretation made the mistake of judging the rebus as if it were a pictorial composition" (212). How exactly does the dream-work work?

(a) The Work of Condensation: Every element in a dream is overdetermined (which is why we always think there is more to our dreams that we can't remember) (214). We can think of condensation as roughly akin to metaphor.

(b) The Work of Displacement: Low-value elements are charged with intensity taken from high-value elements (235). Let's call this metonymy.

(c) The Means of Representation in Dreams: how do dreams represent logical relations? First, in terms of simultaneity, one thing coming after another (239). Causal relations are often represented by minor dream, main dream = sub-clause, main clause (240). There are no either-or relations in dreams: whenever the patient says either-or, he means to be represented a concatenation of two things into one (241). Contradictions in dreams are simply disregarded, as "to the dream, 'No' does not seem to exist" (243). Relations of similarity are expressed in terms of unity (244). Identification is one of the ways this unity can be expressed (244); composite formation is another. Motor inhibition in dreams usually means "a conflict of wills" (254).

(d) Regard for Representability: Dreams like to turn everything into symbols, visual symbols, a feature they share with "psychoneuroses, legends, and popular customs" (259).

(e) Examples: Calculating and Speaking in Dreams: Numerals and calculations often symbolize something else (an idea he probably picked up under the influence of Wilhelm Fliess).

(f) Absurd Dreams. Intellectual Performance in Dreams: Dreams are often absurd because they have to don the fool's cap to speak the truth and get by the censor (285). We should neither take too seriously intellectual thinking in dreams: "everything in our dreams that ostensibly looks like the activity of the function of judgement is not to be understood as, say, an act of thinking on the part of the dream-work; rather, it belongs to the material of the dream-thoughts and has passed from there as a ready-made structure into the manifest dream-content" (286).

(g) Affects in Dreams: "Analysis teaches us that the imagined ideas in the dream-content have undergone displacements and substitutions, while the affects have remained in place unaltered" (299). "Inhibition of affect would be the second achievement of the dream-censorship, as dream-distortion was its first" (306). In other words, dream-censorship succeeds when it a) mixes up our ideas, and b) suppresses affects and/or transforms an affect into its opposite (308). Although affect is suppressed and/or transformed in the dream-work, it is also the productive energy of the dream, what inspires the dream to form in the first place (311).

(h) Secondary Revision: "A function of the psyche indistinguishable from our waking thoughts can make some contribution to the dream-content" (319). Secondary revision is the tendency to make intelligible, to make whole; by doing so, it wants to make something like a daydream out of the dream's material, the expression of a fantasy (a key term which he introduces but does not fully develop here, like much in the Dreambook) (321). Then Freud introduces the "Gotcha" moment: "It is probably, then, that the agency requiring the dream-content to be intelligible is none other than our normal thinking" (327).

So in conclusion, the four factors involved in the dream-work are: 1) condensation, 2) displacement, 3) regard for representability, 4) secondary revision. And "the work of the psyche in the formation of dreams can be broken down into two tasks: it generates the dream-thoughts, and it transforms them into the dream-content" (328).

VII. The Psychology of Dream-Processes

Freud here introduces his "topographic" model of mind, a model which would dominate his thinking until the introduction of the "structural" model (id, ego, superego) in 1923. I have scanned a model of the topographic model made by Dr. Christopher Allegra here. It is somewhat helpful in thinking about this last, more philosophical chapter. Much of what we find here is adapted from his abandoned "Project for a Scientific Psychology," so Chapter VII is kinduva strange addition to the book, but crucial nonetheless.

(a) Forgetting in Dreams: We forget because we resist. "Whatever disturbs the continuation of the work of analysis is a resistance" (336). In other words, we forget purposefully. But we can't remember everything: "the best-interpreted dreams often have a passage that has to be left in the dark...this is the dream's navel, and the place beneath which lies the Unknown" (341).

(b) Regression: Recap: Dreams are fully paid-up psychical acts. The driving force behind them is wish-fulfillment which tries to escape psychical censorship (347).

Freud here introduces his "picket fence" model of the mind. On one side we have Perception, on the other, Motor Activity, both in a way, systems of consciousness (Cs). In between we have a series of "memory traces," and a store of repressed memory traces called the unconscious. Between motor activity and the unconscious (Ucs) stands the preconscious (Pcs). The Ucs "has no access to consciousness except by way of the Preconscious" (353). If we think of the chain perception -> memory -> motor action, we have progressive activity. Dreams are regressive in that they work from the Ucs back toward recent memories and then make hallucinations for the perception system. This chain could also be represented 1. wish from infancy/sexual wish -> 2. days residue -> 3. dream.

(c) On Wish-Fulfillment: Why wishes? Because there is the Unconscious. "I imagine that the conscious wish becomes the initiator of a dream only if it succeeds in wakening an unconscious wish consonant with it, and drawing reinforcement from this" (362). "The wish represented in the dream has to be an infantile one" (363). So there are really two sources for the dream, one repressed in the unconscious, one merely suppressed in the preconscious. Freud compares the two to an entrepreneur and a capitalist: "the daytime thought might possibly play the part of entrepreneur for the dream; but the entrepreneur who has the idea, as we say, and the will to translate it into action, still cannot do anything without capital; he needs a capitalist to take on the expenses,....a wish from the Unconscious" (365). He describes this linkage of the two wishes as transference (to be distinguished from what he later theorizes as patient-analyst transference, though certainly related) (367).

Why does the censor allow us to dream? Precisely because our motor activity has been shut down and it's not dangerous for anyone to have our suppressed/repressed wishes expressed. If we regressed when we were awake, we would be psychotic (some theorists believe that, for this reason, psychotics do not dream).

This opens the way for connecting psychoneurotic symptoms to dreams: "I can say that a hysterical symptom only comes into being when two opposing wish-fulfillments, each with its source in a different psychical system, are in a position to coincide in one expression" (372).

(d) Arousal by Dreams. The Function of Dreams. Anxiety-Dreams: in Ucs, there is no past, nothing is forgotten, nothing brought to an end (378). Under these circumstances, it needs release every once in awhile: the dream is where Pcs acts as a safety-valve for Ucs (379). It allows wishes out insofar as they are compatible with each other. Every once in awhile though, it lets out conflicting wishes, and these result in anxiety dreams (380). Anxiety dreams can also be caused by the expression of wishes that have been down in Ucs for so long that they have turned from pleasurable to unpleasurable, from wine into vinegar, as the model goes. Strangulated libido turned into anxiety. Anxiety is also often associated with witnessing parental coitus at a young age (383).

(e) Primary and Secondary Process. Repression: "The most complicated feats of thinking are possible without the participation of consciousness" (389). When a train of thought is not given adequate expression in consciousness and lingers in Pcs for awhile, it is then "drawn into the Unconscious" (391). This fact leads us to thinking of two different psychical process that play a part in forming dreams: "the one creates perfectly rational dream-thoughts, just as valid as normal thinking; the other treats these in a most disconcerting, irrational manner" (393). The first psy system is "directed towards the free discharge of quantities of excitation; and the second system inhibits this discharge by emitting its own energy-charges, transforming the charge into a quiescent one and probably raising its level" (395). All the first system can do is wish (396). The primary process "aims to discharge excitation in order to set up a perceptual identity; the secondary process has abandoned this intention and taken up another in its place - to set up a thought-identity. All thinking is only a roundabout way..." (397). Primary process is there from the beginning, while secondary process only evolves later in life (398).

When the fulfillment of wishes no longer produce an affect of pleasure but one of unpleasure, those wishes are said to be repressed. The transformation of affect is what is called repression (399).

(f) The Unconscious and Consciousness. Reality: "The Unconscious is the true reality of the psyche, its inner nature just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and just as imperfectly revealed by the data of consciousness as the external world is by the information received from our sensory organs" (405). The Pcs is the "partition screen" between Ucs and Cs (407).

And what of reality? "Whether we should ascribe reality to unconscious wishes, I cannot say" (411).

Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy

This initial post about "Freud and Philosophy" is going to be short for two reasons: 1) This book is a beast, and I'd prefer to purposefully leave things out and keep it short than try to cover everything. It clocks in at 550 pages, and there is not much filler (or the whole thing is filler, I can't decide). 2) It was written (or given, really, because it's a collection of lectures) as a follow-up piece to "Symbolism of Evil," and a proper treatment of it should be written with that work, which I have not yet read, fresh in mind.

The Book is split up into three sections: 1) Problematic (wherein Ricoeur lays out Freud's challenge to his own project of developing a hermeneutics of symbols) , 2) Analytic (wherein he reads publicly just about everything Freud ever wrote), 3) Dialectic (wherein he brings philosophy to bear on Freud and answers some questions he raises in the Problematic).

In Part I, the Problematic, Ricoeur introduces points he covered in "Symbolism of Evil:" he defines a symbol as "a double-meaning linguistic expression that requires interpretation," and interpretation as "a work of understanding that aims at deciphering symbols" (9). "Symbolism of Evil," I gathered, explores symbols and interpretation from the side of religion, in terms of the restoration of meaning that we work through when confronted with a kerygma (proclamation) or message. In this kind of "phenomenology of the sacred," we are essentially interested in the religious "truth" of symbols. When we hear "deciphering" and "double-meaning," however, we should also think of its exact opposite, the "hermeneutics of suspicion" that goes along with the "demystification of illusions" one finds in the works of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, the "masters of suspicion." He takes all hermeneutics to be an unwieldy combination of the two, opposing projects, of "a willingness to suspect and a willingness to listen" (27).

I'm not going to talk about Part II, the Analytic, because it's way too long and basically just an explanation of Freud. Philosophical development/work happens in this part, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that Ricoeur was probably just "reading in public," working through alot of Freud's stuff for the first time and preparing himself for a full encounter.

In Chapter 1 of Part III, the Dialectic, Ricoeur distinguishes psy-A from scientifc psychology on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. Despite "operational reformulations" of psy-A (attempts to make it more scientifc), it will never be so, because the reality that it aims at is interpreted, not observed. The compare and contrast with phenomenology is a bit more interesting. He compares them on 4 points: 1) phenomenology is a reflexive discipline, and psychoanalysis is not (dubious), 2) phenomenology has no real Cs/Pcs/Ucs distinction, only a much less weighty conscious v. "unconscious" distinction, 3) there are infra- and supralinguistic phenomena in psy-A (primal repression, for instance) which do not exist in phenomenology, 4) intersubjectivity in psy-A is defined around the work of transference, a concept absent from phenomenology.

In Chapter 2, "Reflection: An Archaeology of the Subject," Ricoeur says "the philosophical place of analytic discourse is defined by the concept of an archaeology of the subject" (419). This is his first attempt to place psy-A in relation to philosophy. The primary philosophical lesson that psy-A has to offer us is that "the ego is not the master of his own house;" psy-A thus "wounds" and "humiliates" us in uncovering instinctual drives behind supposedly rational processes.

Before developing the consequences of psy-A's reduction to instinct for philosophy, he takes a few moments to confront a philosophical challenge to the theory of instincts, which is that if they are unknowable, how can we say they are at the root of everything? He proposes that we understand that instincts in terms of Kant's divide between empirical realism and transcendental idealism: we can be empirical realists about the knowable instinct representatives and transcendental idealists about the unknowable instincts themselves. He takes it that this "solves" the problem of how we know the instincts.

He then moves on to demonstrating the philosophical benefits of viewing everything in terms of the regressive nature of the instincts: for instance, psy-A demonstrates that the foundation of morality (the victory over the Oedipus complex) bears the archaic marks of fear and thus has the function of both preparing the way for autonomy and blocking it off at an archaic stage (449). In the field of language, psy-A demonstrates the potency of desire in speech. For Ricoeur, the philosophical upshot of the unconscious is to impose a limit on any linguistic transcription that would claim to be without remainder (454). In this sense, Ricoeur disagrees with Lacan: the unconscious is not language but the drive to language, the drive behind expression.

In Chapter 3, "Dialectic: Archaeology and Teleology," Ricoeur wants to show that a full philosophy can be gathered from psy-A, because every arche implies a telos (459). Freud himself, however, always warned that psy-A is not to be completed by a psycho-synthesis (460). Ricoeur nonetheless believes there is an implicit and unthematized teleology in psy-A (461), and to demonstrate this, he goes to the master of teleology: Hegel. He takes it that the phenomenology of spirit and psy-A could not be more opposed on certain things, but nonetheless uses Hegel's categories to draw out the implicit teleology of Freudianism: 1) analyst and analysand are like master and slave: the point of analysis is a rising of sick consciousness to the level of healthy consciousness, and inasmuch as this is the case, analysis has a goal (something that probably could have been said without Hegel), 2) identification: I'm not sure whether Ricoeur brings in identification (the union of "desire to be like and desire to have" (479)) to say that getting beyond its regressive tendencies constitutes a telos or whether identification itself, in that it allows for the subject's maturation, is itself an end. 3) sublimation, an obvious choice when defining a Freudian telos. Ultimately, Ricoeur says, everything comes down to Freud's basic formula in the Introductory Lectures, "Wo es war, soll Ich werden." The slow conquering of the id is the telos of psy-A.

Chapter 4 of Part III, the last chapter of the book, "Hermeneutics: The Approaches to Symbol," is supposed to be the philosophical payoff of this book, but it reflects the winding and comprehensive nature of the book itself (in other words, know that the following summary is my attempt to tie together something that might not be itself completely tied together).

The domain of symbols is marked by two horizons, one of regression, one of progression, one where faith degenerates into idolatry (object worship), one where the mytho-poetic function renews symbols and keeps culture from being a huge artifact. The work of creation in the symbolic is a work of culture, of sublimation, of the categories of Kantian anthropology (having, power, worth (507)) mixing intersubjectively and producing new relationships to self, other and world (thus new symbols (508)). But in order for that creation to take place, one needs to take out the garbage that is piling up on the other end of the symbolic: this involves a critique (demystification) of idols and illusions. The hermeneutics of suspicion is thus necessary for the health of religious life: "idols must die so that symbols may live."

(Side note: the interpretation of symbols recognizes a wholly other because it takes seriously evil, an impossibility in absolute knowledge. Hermeneutics thus forces us back from Hegel to Kant. I don't know what this means precisely, but Liane, you might be interested in this section (527)).

In this light one can reread and soften Freud's critique of religion: analysis does shed light on the birth of idols, but it has no way of deciding whether idolatry/illusion is all that faith is (533). "Analysis can reveal to religious man his caricature, but it leaves him the task of meditating on the possibility of not resembling his distorted double" (533). All of Freud's figures can be read in two lights: is the founding act of the social the fraternal conciliation or the perpetual repetition of parricide (535)? Is the father figure himself only important insofar as he returns as repressed or can we see him in his creative function, as a name-giver (542)? Is religion just a product of fear or of consolation as well (548)? Is reality (in Freud's sense, not just an observable field but the world of men and thing as they appear as objects of desire) something that one has to resign oneself to (i.e., give up one's pleasure for), or is it also something one can wholly love (550)?