Modern Psychoanalysis as Philosophy

Any problem becomes a philosophical one when pushed to an extreme by an inquirer reflecting on his assumptions and methods. Thus Freud (1925) began as a scientist who became a physician for financial reasons, but, as a result of his efforts to treat mental illness, he also became a philosopher with a new conception of human nature. This in turn enabled him to relate the limited practical aims of the physician to the inclusive aim of human happiness and the means and prospects of attaining it that are the traditional domain of the philosopher. Philosophy means love of wisdom, and wisdom is that knowledge of the nature of things that reveals at the same time the basis of the good life. Freud's inquiries took him beyond the natural sciences to art, morals, and politics, but he makes it clear (Freud, 1916) that for him all of these are part of a general science of nature. His “wisdom” follows Copernicus in denying man a unique place in the universe that symbolizes our supposed non-natural, spiritual connection with God. His “wisdom” follows Darwin, who made the distinction of the human species to consist in the complexity of a nature evolved from simpler forms of life, by tracing the evolution of the human individual and race to the interplay of simple drives. In discovering the neuroses, Freud extended the explanation by necessary, natural causes to all of human life. Modern psychoanalysis (Spotnitz, 1969) has renewed the inquiry into the connection between the simple, natural origins of human psychic existence and human happiness by extending Freud's