The Problem of Values in Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is at least three different things. It is a technical procedure for investigating unconscious mental processes and for treating psychoneuroses; it is a systematic body of fact and theory concerning the relations of conscious and unconscious mental processes; and it is, finally, a philosophy of life, in the sense that it is a way of looking at, of thinking about and of appraising some of our basic habits, attitudes and beliefs. Thus psychoanalysis cuts deeply in many directions. It is not only a “depth psychology,” but in its presuppositions and implications, a depth philosophy as well, and what it implies about our ideas of truth and error, right and wrong, good and evil, may be quite as important in the long run as what it more explicitly asserts about the psychogenesis of dreams, about the free-association method of treating psychoneuroses, or about the so-called institutions of the mind.

Since this paper is concerned with the relations between psychoanalysis and human values, let us first turn our attention to the problem of the nature of value. If we look, even casually, at human behavior, we notice that persons, of both sexes and of all ages, approach some objects and avoid others, attend to some things and turn away from others. We also notice that these reactions of approaching and attending are sometimes accompanied by further signs of interest. The object may be examined with curiosity, manipulated with excitement and consumed or embraced (in both suitable and unsuitable cases) with pleasure and gratification. Or the object, as in the esthetic experience, may be merely contemplated with pleasure and delight. True, such reactions as attending to, taking pleasure in and being gratified by an object contain implicit components that no casual or, for that matter, close observer can directly perceive in another person's behavior, nor indeed even in his own. But our normally “thick” perceptions, which we regularly accept as veridical, involve many u