Wittgenstein and Freud

In his search for certainty, Descartes took refuge in the apparent unchallengeability of the individual’s assertions about their own thoughts and feelings. If I say I am thinking of my brother Mike, no one is in a position to tell me that I am actually thinking of my brother Mark. If I say I am at peace, it would seem crazy for someone to tell me that I am boiling with rage. The temptation is to take these points as the basis for an account of the mind that treats it as an impregnable fortress that only the individual has access to and that they have perfect knowledge of. This account can be developed by dividing the contents of consciousness into ideas and impressions or by claiming that our senses generate representations in the mind (“sense data”) etc. Both Wittgenstein and Freud attack the traditional account of the mind, but they do so in very different ways, and it is not obvious that the two attacks are compatible.

To a large extent, Freud accepts the traditional account of consciousness. He agrees that we have direct awareness of the contents of consciousness and that our senses generate representations in the mind. What he rejects is the claim that the conscious activities of our minds are the main determinants of our actions. In his view, the real drivers are forces in the unconscious; the reasons we give for our actions are at best distorted accounts of why we do what we do. The mind is a leaky sieve rather than an impregnable fortress, and many of our assertions about our feelings (“I do not have any angry feelings towards my parents”) are self-serving fabrications we cling to because we do not want to know the truth about ourselves. Traditional accounts of consciousness are okay – they are just wrong to assign primary importance to a delusory sideshow. 

Wittgenstein’s attack is both more fundamental and less fundamental. He argues that traditional accounts of the mind are philosophically confused rather than empirically wrong. The reason our (sincere) assertions about our thoughts and feelings cannot (normally) be challenged is not because we have privileged access to an inner realm that only we can know; rather it is because our language games assign a special role to the individual in relation to their own thoughts and feelings. “I know what I think and feel” is not a substantive claim about a special capacity all humans share; it is a grammatical point about our language game of thoughts and feelings. My sincere statement that I am thinking of my brother Mike is the criterion for saying that this is what I am thinking. Ascribing thoughts to someone which they were totally unaware of would cut across our normal language game and by implication involve a very different concept of a thought. If someone were to say, “you thought you were thinking about your brother Mike and imagining how pleased he must be, but in fact you were thinking about your brother Mark and wondering how he looks now he has shaved off his beard”, we would find this deeply puzzling. If the individual is not aware of their own thoughts, in what sense are they theirs? How would an account of thoughts provided by a third party be connected with the individual to whom they are attributed? Within our normal language game, the main way we find out what someone else thinks and feels is by listening to what they have to say. We can make no sense of an account of an individual’s thoughts that does not have some connection with the account they themselves offer. 

One way of exploring the Wittgsteinian critique of traditional accounts is to consider the statement: “I know what I think and feel, but I can never know what other people think and feel”. This statement is put forward as a fundamental truth, whereas it is actually a misleading representation of the grammar of our concepts. As noted above, it is not that human beings possess a special capability (introspection) that gives them perfect access to their thoughts and feelings; rather the individual has a special role in relation to their own thoughts and feelings as the person who gives expression to them. When we express our thoughts and feelings, we are not making knowledge claims. We cannot and do not have to explain what led us to believe that we have certain thoughts or feelings nor can or do we have to present evidence to support our statements. We simply say what we think and feel, and if we are sincere and others accept this, these are the thoughts and feelings we are said to have. On the rare occasions when someone in everyday life says “I know what I think and feel”, they are generally underlining the rules of our language game because they feel that someone else is infringing (or seeking to usurp) their role as the person who gives expression to their thoughts and feelings. 

The suggestion that we can never know what others think and feel is also confused. This time, rather than seeking to use grammar to justify a substantive (rationalistic) view of our relationship to ourselves, it seeks to use grammar to present a substantive (negative) view of our relationship to others.  When we see someone bang their head and wince, we know that they are in pain. When we see someone’s face light up with joy, we know they are happy. Of course, we may later discover that we were wrong (e.g. because they were rehearsing for a play or because they were trying to deceive us), but the possibility of being wrong does not show that we can never be right about such things nor that we can never be sure we are right. It is the hallmark of substantive claims (as opposed to statements of grammar) that they are bivalent, i.e. may be right or wrong.

So, how does Freud relate to all of this? Rather than recognising that the statement “I know what I think and feel” is confused, he claims that it is wrong. In his view, we (often) do not know our own thoughts and feelings and others may (sometimes) know them better than we do. He also claims that many thoughts (often the most important ones) are unconscious. The typical Wittgensteinian response is to Freud as even more confused than those he is criticising. They rightly note that he fails to recognise that grammatical statements (statements that define our concepts) do not rest on empirical evidence and so cannot be refuted by it. Claiming to have discovered that some thoughts are unconscious would be like claiming to have discovered that metres are not always 100 centimetres long. In fact, the suggestion that thoughts may be unconscious proposes a modification of our concept of a thought (just as the proposal that we should embrace the idea of negative numbers was a modification of our concept of a number), but the justification of such proposals is their usefulness rather than their truth. Freud’s proposal builds on existing features of our language game. Our normal language game allows for self-deception, but only in specific contexts and generally as exceptions rather than the rule. It would be odd for someone to say: “you think you want soup for lunch, but actually you want pasta”, whereas someone might well say: “you think you are offering help altruistically, but actually you are attracted to the person you are helping”. Since our language game is based on what the person does as well as what they say, their actions (and reactions) can provide a basis for challenging their account of their thoughts and feelings. Statements such as: “You say that you were not surprised, but in that case why did you almost fall off your chair?” and “You say the news pleased you, but why then were you in a bad mood for the rest of the afternoon?” have always been a normal part of our language game. 

Freud is not clear about what he is doing, but his proposals do link back to our normal language game. He claims that the most important determinants of our actions are unconscious, but he does not suggest that we should set aside our existing language game and ignore everything an individual says about their thoughts and feelings. On the contrary, his approach involves paying closer attention to an individual’s statements about their inner life and taking a much more sceptical approach to them (or to some of them – his approach does not challenge statements such as: “I feel hot” or “this tastes bitter to me” or “I am imagining a summer meadow” or “I am thinking of my brother Mike”). Freud’s focus is on how we deceive ourselves in relation to what matters most to us and his concept of the unconscious provides a way of exploring the darker, less rational aspects of our behaviour. We can usually translate statements using his new concepts back into the language of our normal language game. Post-Freud, we might say: “you are full of unconscious negative feelings for your parents”. Pre-Freud (or avoiding the concept of the unconscious), we might say: “you say: you have no negative feelings towards your parents but you never visit them and every time they visit you can’t wait to get them out of the house. So, I think you are deceiving yourself”. Here one might ask why the modified language game is needed if it is possible to translate it back into the normal one. Well, if you think that our accounts of our (most personal) thoughts and feelings (and of our motives) are not just occasionally but systematically distorted by how we want to see ourselves, then Freud’s approach provides a useful vocabulary and framework for exploring this issue in more detail.

Wittgenstein’s criticism of the Cartesian account of the mind does not challenge the substantive rationalistic view of human beings which Descartes puts forward. Achieving a clearer view of our language game underlines the implausibility of some philosophical claims (who could seriously claim that our motivations are always 100% clear to us?), but this work of conceptual clarification does not involve making substantive claims about human nature. The full range of substantive positions remain open. A rationalist can claim that we only rarely deceive ourselves in relation to our thoughts and feelings, that our actions generally reflect a reasonable assessment of the situation and that, taken together, they show us pursuing long term goals as part of a reasonably coherent overall plan. Someone else may see this (substantive) view as misguided. They will offer an account of human beings that emphasises our tendency to deceive ourselves, the impulsiveness of much of what we do and the role our needs and fears play in driving our actions. 

Wittgenstein does not take a position in the debate about human nature, but Freud certainly does. Where Descartes argues that we are essentially rational beings, Freud claims we are essentially animals. In his view, our actions are not driven by Reason but by the Unconscious (which insofar as it reflects the parts of ourselves we do not want to acknowledge reflects what might be called “the darker angels of our nature”). Based on his substantive view, he proposes a modification of our language game that creates a framework that provides a way of exploring our tendency to deceive ourselves about our thoughts and feelings. His approach encourages a new sensitivity to certain aspects of what the individual says and does. He then uses the material this produces to challenge the individual’s account of their thoughts and feelings more systematically than was done previously. Wittgenstein seeks to eliminate conceptual confusion, while Freud advances a substantive view of human beings that emphasises the non-rational drives of human action, the extent to which we are driven by anger, hate, and fear rather than our long-term interests.