Freud, Piaget, and Human Knowledge: Some Comparisons and Contrasts

As I traveled the airway from Turku, Finland to Chicago for this reunion with Piaget, arranged by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Erikson Institute, I dreamed that, like Shakespeare's Clarence, I had “pass'd the melancholy flood, with that grim Ferryman that poets write of” and had reached the Other Side, where an official at the customs house designated Chemins defer de I'Enfer said to me (with that touch of asperity reserved for customs officers, even infernal ones), “Have you anything to declare?,” indicating the scientific baggage that I had brought over with me. It represented the accumulation of knowledge gathered across several continents over a lifetime. The two main articles, conspicuously labeled FREUD and PIAGET, were grossly overweight as compared with the rest. The officer asked if they were antiques or personal belongings and what value I placed on them. I said they were invaluable to me and to the rest of the world and that, although they belonged to history, they were more contemporary than many current fads. They were personal in the sense that I never traveled anywhere