JERRY SPRINGER’S MENTOR

Freud's light on the neurosis of the mighty (The Manchester Guardian, September 25th, 1939)

Freud's first fundamental belief is that every event in the mind can be described and explained in mental terms: the other, loaded as it is with complex philosophical implications, can only be mentioned.

It is that determinism applies as rigidly to the mind as to the body. For Freud the word chance had no meaning, except in the scientist's sense. In his view, the wildest dreams, the most obscure delusions, the most trivial forgetting are as much a matter of cause and effect as an eclipse of the sun.

He believed that the dream was the functional nervous disorder in miniature, that in it indirect satisfaction was obtained during sleep for mental trends which in waking life were unsatisfied or repressed.

But the system of analysis or dissection of dreams which Freud created must be carefully distinguished (and it seldom is) from the interpretation of dreams which he proposed.

By reminding us that so-called free association is not free at all but is ruled by laws, Freud again contributed to knowledge. For Freud the dominant factor in human life was the sex instinct. He meant by the word sexuality very much more than the narrow meaning often put upon it.

But in fairness it should be recorded that he probably meant something much more related to our popular conception of it than some of his apologists would have us believe.

As with Marx and Darwin, the key to understanding Freud is not found in arguments as to whether he was right or wrong. He had many valid insights, although they were not nearly as original as his disciples claim. His genius and his evil lay in taking those insights about human nature and using them to craft a comprehensive, systematic theory of behaviour based upon scientific rationalism that sought to exclude all other knowledge and experience, as science is wont to do. The result has been untold havoc, the least of which is our collective subservience to a huge and powerful caring profession that doesn't care and about a billion self-help books all saying the same thing.