The Idea of Freedom in Psycho-Analysis1

In this essay I wish to focus upon a perplexing but recurrent problem in psycho-analytic theory, i.e. that philisophical puzzle or group of closely related puzzles surrounding the terms: freedom, responsibility, determinism, causality, free-will. So much has been written upon this subject that it is with some trepidation that the present discussion is offered to the reader. In a volume whose English translation was published a quarter of a century ago, Moritz Schlick wrote: '… it is really one of the greatest scandals of philosophy that again and again so much paper and printer's ink is devoted to this matter, to say nothing of the expenditure of thought …' (Schlick, 1939, p. 143). Yet imagine how many thousands of pages have been written about these issues since Schlick wrote the above lines. Why is this so? Why does this matter continually recur? To attempt an answer to this question let us now examine the issue as it appears within psycho-analytic writings.

One of the best sources of a clear exegesis of the psycho-analytic doctrine of psychic determinism is Charles Brenner's An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. Brenner states: '… some … hypotheses … of psychoanalytic theory … have received so much confirmation and appear to be so fundamental in their significance that we are inclined to view them as established laws of the mind. Let us start with the principle of psychic determinism. The sense of this principle is that in the mind, as in physical nature about us, nothing happens by chance, or in a random way. Each psychic event is determined by the ones that precede it. Events in our mental lives that may seem to be random and unrelated to what went on before are only apparently so. In fact, mental phenomena are no more capable of such a lack of causal connection with what preceded them than are physical ones. Discontinuity in this sense does not exist in mental life' (Brenner, 1955, pp. 1–2).

Brenner's position is virtually