Psychoanalisis & Irrationality / Sigmund Freud & Phylosophy of mind

Sigmund Freud is probably one of the most remarkable pseudo-scientists of the late XIXth and XXth century. His work revolutionised fields like neuroscience, psychotherapy or psychoanalisis and which theoretical legitimacy dwells among the work of modern scholars.

Like all scientists, Freud was an interpreter of sources and origin, unfortunatelly for him his intregue drove him to search for the origin of a dark and mysterious world which is the human psyche.

His research experimented a lot with dreams and hypnosis and in 1899 he published 'The Interpretation of Dreams' which basically talks about the unconciousness, dream fulfillment and secret desire of human kind.

It is important to address that Freud's work is highly vague: His interpretations are rooted to very few, or strictly no empirical scientific evidence whatsoever. Nevetherless, that does not imply that his research was in any way absurd.

I am extremely interested in many of his ideas.

Freud believed that our rationality, our personality and the way our mind work was conditioned entirely by specific situations of our childhood that conditioned us and shaped us into the people we are now. Certain traumatic experiences of variuos degrees, depending on how we decided to deal with them at the time they happened have helped us be nurtured in a specific pattern.

One cannot ignore, John Locke's idea of 'Tabula Rasa' in which our bind in the moment of birth is blank, empty of conditions and awaiting for future experiences (more importantly during childhood) to shape us. A point of view very well sustained by Freud's ideas too.

Psychoanalisis also penetrated into deep desires and sexual selective preferences, among many other controversial but vague interpretations such as man's sexual desire for one's mother, or the female eternal jealoucy based on the fact that they did not have a penis.

Certain topics within 'Freudian' phylosophy I find irrelevant and unecessary to discuss, others on the other hand I find extremely mind boggling and sensible subjects to analyse such as 'psychosomatic' pain, which is based around the idea that certain pain is not physically inflicted but rather a projection in one's mind making us believe the pain is real when its not.

This ideas has been reviewed by hundreds of experts of both east and western phylosophy and have a vast amount of information regarding this topic, which evokes the concept of the understanding of mind so far, as practically in its infant state, for I believe that we have seen nothing more than the tip of an Iceberg that expands several hundreds of feet down into an abyssmal and dark ocean of conciousness.

One of the reasons why I hold Freud's interpretations in a high regard is because he was nothing short of a bald explorer into a very mysterious and alien innerself discovery. Regardless of how mistakenly absurd some of his conclusions may seem.

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I enjoyed this lecture on foundations of psychoanalisis recorded in Spring 2007 at Yale University