Sublimation in the Atheist Sigmund Freud: Religion and Sublimation in Carl G

CHAPTER FOUR SUBLIMATION IN THE ATHEIST SIGMUND FREUD: RELIGION AND SUBLIMATION IN CARL G. JUNG AND OTTO RANK Freud’s two main additions to the theory of man—the primacy of the unconscious and the centrality of sexuality, were set forth by him early in his career. His masterwork Th e Interpretation of Dreams (1900), with its all-important early section “Th e Project,”148 aimed to put the theory of the unconscious on a scientifi c footing once and for all, or at the very least, on a fi rmer scientifi c footing than anyone had placed it hitherto. Ernest Jones in the fi rst volume of his biography of Freud emphasizes that medical psychology had been groping towards the theory of the unconscious—the idea “that all one’s mental capacities could be in full usage without consciousness being called up” (words of British psychologist Sir Samuel Wilkes)—for at least two decades before Freud’s epoch-making book appeared.149 Th ough Freud cites a host of psychol- ogists who wrote on the unconscious, Berlin psychologist Th eodor Lipps was one of his most important predecessors. As early as 1883 Lipps had written the following: “We not only assert the existence of unconscious mental processes alongside the conscious ones. We fur- ther postulate that the unconscious processes are the basis of the conscious ones. [italics mine—ALC] In the proper conditions unconscious processes rise to consciousness and then return to the unconscious.”150 Freud underlined this passage in his copy of Lipps’ article which is in his personal library and this is what Freud went on to prove scientifi - cally in his 600+-page work. Th ere he posits a whole mechanistic topog- raphy of the human mind—a theory of mind in which there are psychic energies and forces that govern the mental/psychic system in a way analogous to the theory of the conservation of matter in the physical universe. Th e psychic apparatus is characterized by psychic energies 148 For a detailed discussion of Freud’s “Th e Project” see “Project for a Scientifi c Psychology” in Jones, I, 379–404. 149 Samuel Wilkes, cited in Jones, I, 397. 150 Th eodor Lipps, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens (Bonn, Germany: Cohen, 1883), p. 149. 96 chapter four and forces—pressures, acting and reacting forces (cathexes), that move through pathways/passages all tending towards stabilization and bal- ance. Th e normal psyche then is an equilibrium of confl icting forces such as we fi nd in nature. Th e fact that these energies and forces cannot be seen or measured with the instruments available to Freud in his time was to him a technological limitation (no means to quantify accurately), but the eff ects of these psychic forces were observable to the scientifi c investigator. Freud assumed the physical/electrical nature of the forces as part and parcel of his training as a medical doctor and brain physiologist. One must never lose sight of Freud’s fi rm grounding in the physical and biological/medical sciences, as it is so important to his self- conception as a man of science/naturalist/medical doctor and to his lifelong attempts to make psychoanalysis and psychology full-fl edged Science with a capital S. In this aspect Freud is a materialist of the fi rst order. With the mind, just as with other natural phenomena, Freud believed that what existed was “masses in motion,” invisible energies, to be sure, but energies, comparable to electrical, chemical and physical ones. It is because of this steadfast commitment to science that Freud avoided ascribing quality to the phenomena he observed.151. Psychic forces for him, like their chemical, physical counterparts, had quantity only. A scientifi c fact or discovery was a truth about reality, which meant the natural, empirical world, a datum which had no inherent value in itself. In this Freud diff ers markedly from his contemporaries, the phenomenologists in philosophy, in that for him all quality is added to phenomena by the human consciousness and therefore is a subjec- tive accretion with no scientifi c validity. Hence, so many of the quali- ties and values that society or individuals or human civilization and cultural traditions have espoused over centuries are called “illusions” by Freud and even hallucination plays a major role in his epistemol- ogy.152 Th e human individual/psyche, confronted with the diffi cult realities of life which it must negotiate, forms illusions, fantasies, which make that life more palatable, acceptable or pleasant. Empirical experi- ence may provoke pleasure or pain, comfort or discomfort for the organism and its psyche, but these are objective and value-free. 151 Volney P. Gay, Freud on Sublimation. Reconsiderations (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992) pp. 45–91 and 113–118. 152 Ibid, 74–75..

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