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Kohut and the Perils of Killing Sacred Cows
Heinz Kohut believed that psychoanalysis should adopt new theories in the light of new evidence. His work with borderline and narcissistic patients led him to question the prevailing Freudian orthodoxy, and, in 1977, he published The Restoration of the Self, in which he put forward a theoretical framework based on a psychology of the self Continue reading
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Wittgenstein and Freud: Overrated or Undervalued?
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud have a lot in common. Both were Viennese gurus, who inspired groups of disciples to preach their world-changing revelations to a sceptical world. Both were forthright in putting forward their views, but believed they were offering therapy for which the recipient would ultimately be grateful. Both reached the high point Continue reading
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How is that we can speak about and share our “indescribable” feelings?
Sometimes we find it difficult to express our feelings. They seem almost impossible to put into words. “I cannot describe it to you, you would need to experience it yourself”. But perhaps we should try harder. To some extent, saying you cannot describe your experience is a cop out. Generally, there are lots of things Continue reading
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Putting Love at the Heart of Psychoanalysis: Suttie’s Critique of Freud
Ian Dishart Suttie was a Scottish psychoanalyst who died in 1935, shortly after completing a powerful critique of Freud, entitled The Origins of Love and Hate. Whereas Freud presents the individual as caught between a hostile external world and a maelstrom of internal excitations, Suttie claims that we are born with a need for love Continue reading
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Is Science Providing Evidence for Freud’s Concept of the Unconscious?
In the face of attacks on the validity of psychoanalysis, it is tempting to argue that science and especially neurology is providing empirical evidence that Freud was right. Scientific evidence for unconscious processes includes research demonstrating that individuals process information, make decisions, and change their behaviour based on stimuli that are below conscious awareness. For Continue reading
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How will we know when the Singularity occurs?
Elon Musk has predicted that the Singularity – the moment when computers become more intelligent than humans – could occur as soon as 2029. But how will we know that this has happened? What would make us conclude that computers had surpassed us? There is no doubt that they can do lots of things better Continue reading
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Does psychoanalysis reveal the causes of human action or does it provide insights into why we do what we do?
As a scientist, Freud’s aim was to identify the causes of mental illness and, more broadly, the causal processes underlying all mental phenomena. The evidence he gathered came primarily from what his patients told him, but also from his own experiences and from myth and literature. This is not the sort of material from which Continue reading
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The Mad World of Melanie Klein (Part 2)
Klein started with the traditional idea of Subject meets Object, but she developed this idea very differently from philosophers, ending up making many strange, mad-sounding claims. Post-Kleinians used the flexibility of her framework to develop all sorts of new ideas, some of which seem at least as mad, if not madder. One of Klein’s early Continue reading
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The Mad World of Melanie Klein (Part 1)
Freud was a restless thinker, always challenging established positions including those he himself established. Unlike with Wittgenstein, however, it is hard to break his work into clear periods, since he rarely abandoned his ideas entirely, generally preferring to modify elements of his theory rather than rebuild the edifice from the ground up. As a result, Continue reading
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Do we really know what we are thinking and feeling?
There are few things worse than other people telling us what we think and feel. It is a fundamental attack on our right to express ourselves. It reflects an aggressive narcissism that does not respect boundaries because it does not really accept that other people exist. It is understandable, therefore, that we should want to Continue reading
Wittgenstein and Freud 