The notions of repression, the unconscious, madness, and sex lie at the heart of the psychoanalysis of Freud, but they also belong to the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer, yet they are named differently. Both Schopenhauer and Freud think of and treat these themes perhaps identically or at least similarly.
Repression and the Unconscious
According to Schopenhauer, our characters are natural, inborn, and hence cannot be changed. Yet this does not imply that our lives are expected, coherent, solid, or known. Our lives, for the most part, are unexpected and lack solidity and coherence because we are distanced from our characters, we do not know what forms our characters. Our characters close themselves off from us; our characters are strangers to us, we do not know what they are.
This is why, according to Schopenhauer, we usually endeavor to do what is “too noble” for our characters and that in which we are not truly interested because we form our self-image only through the eyes of the others. We engage in projects only for the sake of the other, only because of the other.
Schopenhauer says that our lives lack coherence and we are turned toward the other because we cannot know ourselves; self-knowledge is perhaps impossible. The reason for this impossibility is our need for self-esteem. This need is “cleverer than the cleverest man of the world”.
Self-esteem controls and governs us. Because of our self-esteem, we repress degraded, corrupt, and ignoble thoughts and desires. We repress them because of the social and parental limitations inserted into us since our childhood. That is, this repression occurs because of the superego placed, inserted, or implanted in us. We refuse such desires and thoughts and exclude them from our “clear consciousness”: “The intellect is not to know anything about [them] . . . since the good opinion we have of ourselves would inevitably suffer”.
What Schopenhauer means here is that we only belatedly, unintentionally, and unexpectedly encounter who we really are and discover what we really dread and want. Schopenhauer says that we often harbor within ourselves that of which we are not conscious, and that of which we are not conscious moves us and controls how we feel and act. In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer says that what dwells in our unconsciousness governs us and hides itself from us and that sometimes our unexpected or unthought actions show how we are controlled by what we either refuse to acknowledge or cannot catch sight of.
These examples show that the Freudian notions of repression, the unconscious, the superego, and slips of the tongue are already at work in the philosophy of Schopenhauer. The philosophy of Schopenhauer anticipates, and even says before Freud, the Freudian notions that there exists in our psyche a place into which our repressed desires are brought, that there exists a parental and social pressure, resembling the superego, bringing about a need for repression, and that there always happen certain accidents that reveal how we are controlled by what we repress, by our unconsciousness.
Madness
In his discussion and thinking of mental life, Schopenhauer examines the role that repression plays in madness in such a way that anticipates Freud. Schopenhauer says that madness is a disease pertaining to memory.
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer says that when the mind suffers from and experiences a certain trauma, the mind represses it by eliminating it from its memory and then invents untrue events and narratives in order to fill the places left empty by the eradicating and repressing of these bad memories. That is, the mind invents untruths in order to fill its own voids and hence to ensure its continuity, which is an illusory continuity.
This means that we tend to divert our thoughts and thinking from what we consider to be embarrassing, humiliating, or painful. In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer calls these processes of diverting our attention and filling the gaps of our memories “violent casting out of one’s mind” and “putting into one’s head”.
Sex
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer, preceding and anticipating Freud, says that the majority of our actions are governed by, and arise from out of, repressed, neglected, and undisclosed sexual desires.
“Next to the love of life . . . [sexual desire] shows itself . . . as the strongest and most active of all motives, and incessantly lays claim to half the powers and thoughts of the younger portion of mankind. It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort; it has an unfavorable influence on the most important affairs, interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds. It does not hesitate to intrude with its trash and to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned. It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Freud on Schopenhauer’s Anticipation of the Main Themes of Psychoanalysis
Freud admits and confirms that the main ideas of psychoanalysis can be found in Schopenhauer’s philosophy and that the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer anticipates and foresees what lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, yet he denies and refuses the assumption that his theories are dependent on the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
“The theory of repression I certainly worked out independently [of Schopenhauer]. I knew of no influence that directed me in any way to it, and I long considered this idea to be original until O. Rank showed us the passage in Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation where the philosopher is struggling for an explanation for insanity. What he states there concerning the striving against the acceptance of a painful piece of reality agrees so completely with the content of my theory of repression that once again I must be grateful for the possibility of making a discovery to my not being well read. To be sure, others have read this passage and overlooked it without making this discovery, and perhaps the same would have happened to me if, in former years, I had taken more pleasure in reading philosophical authors. In later years I denied myself the great pleasure of reading Nietzsche’s works with the conscious motive of not wishing to be hindered in the working out of my psychoanalytic impressions by any preconceived ideas. I have, therefore, to be prepared – and am so gladly – to renounce all claim to priority in those many cases in which the laborious psychoanalytic investigations can only confirm the insights intuitively won by the philosophers. The theory of repression is the pillar upon which the edifice of psychoanalysis rests. It is really the most essential part of it”
Sigmund Freud, The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement
To the writings of Freud on Schopenhauer also belong the acknowledgment that “Schopenhauer’s unconscious “will” is equivalent to the psychological drives of psychoanalysis” and the assertion that Schopenhauer reminds “human beings in unforgettable words of the still under-valued significance of their sexual drives”.
Did Freud Read Schopenhauer?
Perhaps Freud’s assertion that his theories do not arise from out of the philosophy of Schopenhauer is inaccurate or untrue, for Freud grew up in Vienna where everybody, interested in philosophy, was at least aware of the philosophy of Schopenhauer and his views on sex and sexual desires. Schopenhauer’s books were widely read and discussed at that time in Vienna.
Schopenhauer’s philosophy was also widely known at that time because of Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. Eduard von Hartmann, now completely ignored and forgotten, was a very influential philosopher at the end of the nineteenth century; he considered himself to be a disciple of Schopenhauer and helped make the thinking-philosophizing of Schopenhauer widely discussed, known, and appreciated.
There is also another view that argues that when Freud says that “I denied myself the great pleasure of reading Nietzsche’s works with the conscious motive of not wishing to be hindered in the working out of my psychoanalytic impressions by any preconceived ideas”, he must have been aware, to a certain degree, what philosophies to avoid and which philosophers to keep away from. Perhaps this is nothing but a strategic move only to assert and confirm the originality of his theories.
There is also another view, which can be found in F. J. Sulloway’s Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend, that indicates that Freud in fact attended a seminar in Vienna that introduced and discussed the thinking-philosophizing of both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
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