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Schopenhauer. An Attempted Psychoanalysis of the Philosopher. eduard hitschmann.
Psychoanalytic Observations upon the History of Philosophy. alfr. FRH. V. winterstein.
From the “Psychology” of Hermann Lotze. Contributed by S. ferenczi.
An Attempted Psychoanalysis of Schopenhauer.— Hitschmann justifies, at the outset, the application to the philosopher as well as the poet and the artist of the psychoanalytic method of investigation. For the philosopher as a rule is not the exact scientific investigator but. like the artist, the intuitive creator of his own system. The work of each is a subjective product bearing the marks of his personality, his psyche. It is a necessity with the philosopher to brood over life itself rather than to live. He halts at the questions which occupy the child, problems of birth and death, good and evil, the purpose and aim of his own existence. These are revived within him in a more spiritualized form but leave him at a certain plane of development. The scientific investigator on the contrary displaces his interest over into another territory, thus sublimating his infantile interest and curiosity. The philosopher shows by his endless doubting, seeking, struggling, that he is never through with these original problems, that he “suffers” from them all his life long. There is no hard and fast line to be drawn between really scientific philosophical investigators and these intensively subjective philosophers. But psychoanalysis recognizes many who in the struggle with instinct and mental conflict either succumb, as the neurotic, or attain a higher goal, as the artist and poet. Every philosopher bears some of the elements of the mystic and artist, some of the characteristics of the neurotic. The artist is able to represent the unconscious phantasy world satisfactorily to himself and others. The philosopher seeks at least to justify his weaknesses and excesses through his interpretation of the world and to create thereby a satisfying a