Sigmund Freud

Entrance to Freuds consulting room (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a Jew of Austrian parentage and the founder of psychoanalysis. He studied medicine in Vienna and then neurology and psychopathology. He was marginalized by the medical community for his interest in the idea of infant sexuality. Today he, perhaps ironically, is often frowned on as a reductionist.

Freud remains one of the great innovators of the modern age. He attempted to scientifically outline the idea of the unconscious which formerly had been represented in literature, philosophy and nineteenth-century occultism.

His psychoanalytic techniques of free association and abreaction were influenced by several other contemporaneous “doctors of the mind,” most notably Jean-Martin Charcot, but Freud made them uniquely his own.

His works were almost entirely destroyed by the occupying Nazis. In 1938 he reluctantly withdrew from Vienna to London, leaving behind several sisters, all of whom died in concentration camps.

A habitual cigar-smoker, his relationship with his daughter Anna became extremely close; she acted as secretary, friend and confidant. Freud eventually contracted jaw cancer but refused pain-killers because they dulled his mind and interfered with his work.

After Freud’s death Anna further elaborated on the idea of defense mechanisms, distinguishing herself as an important thinker in her own right.

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Anna Freud

Anna Freud (1895-1982) was the daughter of Sigmund Freud and an important psychoanalytic thinker particularly in the area of child psychoanalysis. Her The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) elaborated on her father’s idea of defense mechanisms.

Sigmund and his daughter Anna Freud Nederlands: Foto van Sigmund en Anna Freud, op vakantie in de Italiaanse Dolomieten (1913) Česky: Sigmund Freud se svou dcerou Annou (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Free Will

"WE'RE FREE TO CHOOSE" - National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, 1941 - 1945) - 516103 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Free Will is the belief that human beings have the ability to make choices. Most philosophers advocating the belief in free will agree that personal freedom has practical limits, but not all agree that the freedom to choose is limited with regard to ethics. That is, some say that we can always choose the good, even though we may not always be able to choose certain activities.

The view that we can always choose the good, however, is complicated. As both Catholic theologians and psychiatrists will say, personal culpability for doing bad things might be lessened by such factors as peer pressure (with teenagers), stress, trauma, emotional immaturity or instability, and so-called mental illness or mental injury. Of course, just what constitutes a bad thing is not always agreed upon among theologians and psychiatrists—masturbation being a good example.¹

J.-P. Sartre called the practical limits of personal freedom ‘freedom in facticity’, meaning that individuals have a limited range of choices, particularly with regard to available opportunities and activities.² But for Sartre individuals can choose to do ethically right or wrong actions, and to give or not give consent to issues involving ethics.

Some thinkers like B. F. Skinner and Daniel Dennet believe that we have no real freedom but our thoughts and actions are the outcome of a complex series of antecedent causes.

Meanwhile, the Protestant Christian reformer John Calvin believed that some people are predestined for hell and others for heaven.

Who can figure!

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—

¹ Here’s a good comment: http://www.debatepolitics.com/archives/40072-masturbation-religion-and-psychiatry.html

² When I was at school a common example you’d hear was, “can someone in a wheelchair be a mountain climber?’ Today, however, this example doesn’t really hold up because new attitudes about persons with so-called disabilities are, in many cases, contributing to these people being seen as persons with difference. And in many instances, truly extraordinary things are being achieved by persons different from statistical norms. See, for instance, The Blind Painter (below).

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Sir James G. Frazer

J. M. W. Turner's painting of the Golden Bough incident in the Aeneid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sir James G. Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist best known for his classic study of magic and religion, The Golden Bough.

His work had a tremendous effect on Joseph Campbell, among others. And many see him as one of the founders of modern anthropology.

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Frankenstein

Steel engraving (993 x 71mm) for frontispiece to the revised edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, published by Colburn and Bentley, London 1831. The novel was first published in 1818. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Frankenstein (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus) is Mary Shelley‘s novel of 1818 in which a Baron Frankenstein creates a horrible monster by reassembling and electrifying body parts from exhumed cadavers. The monster is never called ‘Frankenstein’ in the book but the idea stuck.

Apparently Mary Shelley, the wife of the poet Percy Shelley, awoke one morning after dreaming of the unwritten novel. She quickly wrote the plot and opening pages. The story has been set to several films, the most notable starring Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931).

Ultimately Frankenstein is a tragedy as the monster eventually destroys its creator. Symbolically, the Frankenstein monster represents anyone who, for all intents and purposes, seems ‘dead,’ callous and uncaring.

Like all archetypal images, however, we’d do well to remember that, in most cases, they represent aspects of real people. As such most people are far more complicated, valuable, and redeemable than a mere caricature. They may seem to be totally evil, but in some instances they can still behave ethically. In a few instances of psychopathology (and evil), however, some individuals appear to become totally engulfed by archetypal forces (or demons).

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St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi (circa 1182-1220) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before becoming known as St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone was the son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant, next in line to take over his father’s prosperous business.

In his youth Francis was a popular dilettante, enjoying friends and parties. In keeping with expectations for the young upper-class men of the day, he fought in the army and was taken prisoner. Suffering a serious illness, Francis apparently had some kind of powerful mystical vision.

He returned to his father, telling him he could no longer continue with the family business. Scorned by his father, Francis went to the central square in Assisi where he removed his clothing for all to see, which was his way of renouncing his life of worldly gain. Standing naked, a nearby person threw him a course blanket, which he took to wear. Francis went on to form the friars minor (fratres minores), a monastic order characterized by chastity and extreme poverty, and all of its members wore the same course cloth.

The order grew quickly. By 1219 the Franciscans swelled to over 5,000 members. His former friend and spiritual love, Lady Clare of Assisi, followed suit by likewise renouncing the world. She founded a similar but sequestered order and was eventually canonized.

Stories about St. Francis abound, telling of his love and tenderness toward animals, his writing a canticle to “brother sun, sister moon” and his insistence on complete poverty, which he affectionately personified as “Lady Poverty.” He apparently opened the Bible at random every morning and read a verse to set the tone for his actions throughout the day, believing that God directed him to the right passage. And with Papal permission he unsuccessfully tried to convert the Muslims in the Holy Land, who nonetheless were impressed by his piety.

He also endured a painful medieval eye operation using red-hot irons to remove cataracts. And he is one of the very few mystics said to have miraculously received the stigmata—physical marks of Christ’s crucifixion appearing on one’s own hands and feet.

St. Francis was buried in his native town of Assisi. He remains, perhaps, Catholicism’s most popular saint, probably because his kind of example can be easily understood by rank and file Catholics. However, it’s hard to know if his knowledge of God was a deep as, say, the contemplative St. Faustina Kowalska, who apparently saw Jesus on a near daily basis.

His feast day is October 4.

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Four Noble Truths

Dhamekh Stupa, where the Buddha gave the first sermon on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to his five disciples after attaining enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. Also seen behind the stupa in the left corner is the yellow-coloured spire of Digamber Jain temple, dedicated to 11th Jain Tirthankar, Shreyansanath, known to be his birth place. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Four Noble Truths are the core of Buddhist teaching, said to have been outlined by the Buddha in his first discourse at Benares. They are as follows:

1. All of life is suffering (dukkha)
2. The cause of suffering is wrongful desire, craving or thirst (tanha)
3. Suffering can be overcome by eliminating these causes
4. The method for eliminating suffering is outlined in the Eightfold Path.

This differs from the Christian view of suffering. Christians, particularly Catholics, tend to make room for a positive view of some forms of suffering, regarded as a means towards purification in preparation for everlasting heaven. While neurotic suffering is not accepted and unnecessary suffering is to be avoided, the Catholic saints do not try to eradicate unavoidable “holy suffering,” which they believe should be patiently endured.

In some cases extreme suffering is welcomed as a blessing by the Catholic saint. St. Faustina Kowalska, for instance, embraced holy suffering because she believed she was instructed by Christ that it would maximize her heavenly reward. The depth psychologist C. G. Jung had something similar (but not identical) to say in his treatment of alchemy. For Jung suffering was a necessary kind of ‘smelting,’ as it were, for soul making—or rather, self making.

Again, the Buddhist understanding of suffering is very different from that of both Jungian theory and Christian theology. Buddhism sees all suffering as bad and something to be avoided, whereas mystical Christians see some types of suffering as a valuable experience leading toward purification and a heavenly reward beyond all human imagination. Jung’s take on suffering isn’t quite so grand as the Christian view. It’s more focused on psychological development within this life, and doesn’t really speak to the afterlife.

The Buddhist view of suffering and its solution also involves a supposed realization that we have no individual self. To most Christians and Jungians, alike, this view is simply misguided.

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Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault stencil, Lyon, France by biphop

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French social and historical thinker best known for his contribution to (what has been called) poststructuralism.

Foucault was a homosexual and experienced some friction over this. Succumbing to AIDS, his cultural and intellectual legacy is considerable.

Some argue that Foucault’s view is too bleak, placing undue emphasis on social power as the sole force which creates socially relative discourses and discursive practices. There isn’t too much room for “love and compassion” as a driving social force in Foucault’s analyses, although he does address this and related ideas from the perspective of deconstruction.

He read voraciously. Legend has it that each day he would return home from the library carrying a stack of books that he’d pour over that very night.

Foucault says that he had little interest in the ideas of another French thinker, Jean-Paul Sartre. But the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on his ideas is well documented.

Foucault’s major works are Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things (1966), Discipline and Punish (1975) and History of Sexuality (1976).

His later views about the creative power of discourse are perhaps best summed up in a series of interviews, published the book Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (1980). And as Shaheryar Ali suggests, he had a profound influence on what was to become the ‘New Historicism’ » See in context

Foucault’s ideas are too numerous and comlicated to cover in a short entry. But searching within this site, using any of the following keywords will help to demonstrate the depth and breadth of his thought: Archaeology, Athleticism, Bourdieu (Pierre), Counter-Discourse, Deviance, Discourse, DSM-IV-TR, False Consciousness, Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich), History, Hobbes (Thomas), Illness, Language, Madness, Marx (Karl), Meme, Myth, Postmodernism, Sign, Szasz (Thomas)

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Fortuna

Archaeological Museum in Milan, (Italy). Roman goddess Fortuna (good luck); fresco from a Roman ara. Picture by Giovanni Dall'Orto, July 25 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fortuna is a Roman deity, equivalent to the Greek Tyche. The most notable difference between the Roman and Greek forms is that the Roman Fortuna is, at times, less universal than Tyche.

Like Tyche, Fortuna represents a general concept of chance and luck. Her temples were in specific cities like Rome, with an unrivaled site at Palestrina. But unlike Tyche (who had altars at Thebes and Athens), the Romans observed a “Fortune of the Day.”

The Romans also invoked Fortuna for victory in battle. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance Fortuna was very popular, often depicted with a wheel turning through cycles of good and bad luck, joy and sadness. She’s also depicted with a rudder, a globe or with wheels or wings.

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Forms

The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the philosophy of Plato, the Forms are eternal, unchanging Ideas which, in themselves, are said to be true existence.

Plato believed that the world which we perceive with the senses is illusory. Our day to day reality is a world of becoming. Because our perceptible world is a prisoner of time and always changing, it’s not really real. This view has obvious connections with the Hindu concept of maya.

For Plato, only the eternal and unchanging world of “being” (the Forms) is truly real. Plato outlines his theory of the Forms in the Phaedo and illustrates them through a Cave Analogy in his classic, The Republic.

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