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May 21, 1973. THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM (Eighth Freud Anniversary Lecture). Otto E. Sperling, M.D.
Dr. Sperling maintains that free will is an illusion, in fact, the externalized result of the interaction of conflicting forces. People feel free when what they are being forced to do makes sense; they feel unfree when what they have to do appears irrational. For more than four hundred years, science was based on the philosophy of determinism which maintains that all events, even moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. In reviewing the psychoanalytic literature on determinism, many writers, including Jones, Abraham, Jokl, and Knight, followed Freud in believing that determinism governs mental life. But following publication in 1927 of Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which set intrinsic limits to the precision of experimentation, many metaphysicians and some psychoanalysts disavowed determinism. Waelder and Rangell, for instance, regarded free will as the wave of the future.
The modern computer, the author notes, shows the inherent advantage of the deterministic approach; it can be programmed to make decisions in the same way that the human mind does, weighing the options, their effects, their probabilities, and considering a multitude of factors—all based on determinism. Thus, if a computer can make decisions without a free will, man does not need free will either, and the concept becomes an unnecessary interpolation. If there are enough motivations to proceed with a certain course of action, a person does it, and this can be accompanied by the illusion that he has a free choice in doing it. The author presented a clinical case to demonstrate that free will is always on the side of the stronger motivation.
Although Dr. Sperling denies freedom of will, he does not imply that he underestimates the need to feel free. Objective political freedom and subjective feelings of freedom do not necessarily go together. A person suf