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Wakefield's book is devoted to Freud as a philosopher of mind rather than Freud as the founder of a form of treatment. The main purpose of his book is Reconstructing Freud's Argument for Unconscious Mental States, which is the book's subtitle. Wakefield's focus is on the descriptive rather than the dynamic unconscious. As Freud recognized, the plausibility of the concept of a “dynamic unconscious” rests on first making a convincing case for the existence of unconscious mental states. It is worth noting that Freud himself believed that psychoanalysis’ claim on posterity lay in its theoretical formulations regarding the workings of the mind rather than as a form of treatment.1 Freud (1925/1926a) wrote, “The future will probably attribute far greater importance to psychoanalysis as the science of the unconscious than as a therapeutic procedure” (p. 265). It may seem odd to think of Freud as a major philosopher of mind, given his frequent expressions of disdain for philosophy. For example, he wrote that “We have nothing to expect from philosophy except that it will once again haughtily point out to us the intellectual inferiority of the object of our study” (Freud, 1915/1916, pp. 97-98). He also stated that “I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper” (Freud, 1924/1925, p. 59).
Despite his frequent criticisms of philosophy, Freud referred admiringly to Plato, Schopenhauer, Kant, and of course, his teacher Brentano, and also wrote rather dramatically in a letter to Fliess:
I see how, via the detour of medical practice, you are reaching your first ideal of understanding human beings as a physiologist, just as I most secretly nourish the hope of arriving, via these same paths, at my initial goal of philosophy. For that is what I wanted originally, when it was not yet at all clear to me to what end I was in the world” (Freud, 1895/1950a, p. 159).
It is also worth noting that during his university training, Freud enrolled in six of Brentano's philosophy courses