Freud Or Fraud?
By Charles Wellborn
Professor of Religion Emeritus, Florida State University
Sigmund Freud, the influential psychoanalyst, fled his native Vienna as a Jewish refugee from Nazi persecution in the 1930s and settled in London, where I now live. Recently I visited his London home which has been preserved as a memorial museum. It was an interesting experience. His desk has been kept just as he left it, and in his study is the famous couch, where his patients reclined as they poured out their troubled confessions to him.
Without doubt Freud was one of the significant intellectual figures of the 20th century. In passing, it is interesting to note that three of his grandchildren have made meaningful impacts on modern British culture. Anna Freud was a distinguished psychoanalyst in her own right, Lucian Freud is ranked among major British artists, and Clement Freud was a long-serving Liberal Member of Parliament. The Freuds have continued to be an influential family.
The grandfather, Sigmund, overshadows them all. A younger friend of mine, a university professor, teaches a course in "The Making of the Modern Mind." In that course he calls attention, as others have before him, to three intellectual revolutions which have decisively helped to shape the way modern men and women think. The first of those events was the Copernican revolution, in which the 16th century Polish astronomer displaced the long-held human idea that the earth was the center of the universe and, accordingly, that earth`s inhabitants were vastly more important than any other form of life. Copernicus demonstrated that the sun was the center of our solar system and that earth was only one of several planets which revolved around it. He opened up the vista of a vast universe reaching far beyond our own planetary system.
The second great intellectual revolution was initiated by Charles Darwin. Darwinism attacked the traditional religious idea of the instantaneous creation of human beings in the Garden of Eden and sought to replace that idea with the concept of a multi-century evolutionary development which opened up the possibility that human beginnings lay in primordial muck and mire.
In the twentieth century Sigmund Freud precipitated a third intellectual revolution. He opened up a possibility that undermined the whole concept of the individual as a functioning and choosing individual. Moral decisions were not, as Freud understood them, made with any real freedom but were controlled by our reactions to a mysterious force, the Unconscious. Most of our actions were seen as repressions of the power of that force, dictated by the cultural judgments of our surrounding society. And those repressions were the primary source of psychological illness and instability.
I quickly confess that the preceding paragraph is a superficial and primer book description of Freud`s teachings, which are far more intricate and complex than I have indicated here. I must emphasize that in my discussion I am not primarily interested in a theoretical discussion of what Freud actually meant in his work. Nor am I am concerned with an academic debate about those teachings. No thinker should be totally judged by how his or her followers and disciples have understood him or her, and I am not competent to judge whether present-day disciples of Freud actually have understood him correctly. Rather, I am concerned with what I choose to call "Freudianism." I mean by that term the popularist versions of Freud`s ideas that have permeated and strongly influenced our modern culture. The average man or woman in the street today knows little of what Freud actually taught-and probably cares less; nevertheless, our way of thinking and acting in the modern world has been profoundly influenced by the popular and probably, in many cases, twisted understanding of those teachings.
In a real sense I grew up in the shadow of Freud. As a high school senior I read his The Interpretation of Dreams and was deeply impressed. Dreams are mysterious things and of nagging interest, more so to the dreamer than to anyone else. There are few more boring conversational experiences than listening to someone else relate the content of last night`s dream. But dreams are puzzles, and puzzles invite solutions. Freud offered a deeply intriguing key to the meaning of my dreams.
As a college student I read more Freud, and my fascination with his work continued. I read with special interest his The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and I learned from that treatise that, whatever people said, it was not what they really unconsciously meant. Absorbing that idea meant, among other things, that I was able to feel a sense of superiority over most of my fellow human beings for their pathetic lack of self-knowledge.
Freud, of course, spent a great deal of his time talking about sex, which he considered to be the prime driving force in human behavior. As a young college student I was a reasonably virile, healthy male. For me, as for almost all of my fellows, sex in all its aspects was a predominant and absorbing interest. It dominated our conversations and worked its way into our dreams. Under the influence of Freud I saw sex as a mighty river, flowing through dark channels, erupting here and there into daylight, but always returning to underground caverns where it took its unpredictable and amoral course. Ego, super-ego, and id battled in my imagination, and I was encouraged, as I wanted to be, in the idea that any limitation on the sexual drive was simply an unhealthy "repression."
Only one of Freud`s major themes gave me difficulty and aroused a degree of skepticism. His famous "Oedipus complex" puzzled me. Freud, using as his metaphor the plot of Sophocles` Greek drama, taught that every male child has an unconscious sexual longing for his mother and a consequent hostility toward his father, who has usurped that sexual relationship. Try as I might, I could not make that jibe with my own experience. I had never felt any sexual desire, even in my dreams, for my mother, and I had a close and loving relationship with my father. I was as repulsed by the idea of incest as Oedipus himself. In this regard, even at my tender age, I could not make Freud`s teaching fit reality.
Across the years this initial skepticism slowly extended itself to much more in popular Freudianism. For one thing I met, especially in academic circles, persons who had apparently swallowed Freud whole-hook, line, and sinker. Some were even able to make sense of his preposterous hypothetical explanation of the beginning of human society in a violent patricide committed by young apes on their male parent in a contest for the father`s sexual partners.
As a pastor and then a teacher I came into contact with a number of people who had undergone Freudian psychoanalytic treatment. I am sure that some individuals have been helped by such an experience, but I must honestly confess that most of those I encountered seemed to have emerged from their treatment more psychologically crippled, self-obsessed, and incompetent than before.
The British philosopher, Roger Scruton, provides a perceptive analysis of Freudianism. He writes, "Consider the Oedipus complex. The reason why you were so horrified by the thought of sleeping with mum, Freud tells me, is that you wanted to. The strength of your aversion proves the strength of your desire. That`s how the unconscious works."
Looking at Freud`s teaching in this way helps one to understand what the German thinker, Wittgenstein, called the "charm" of Freud. We are presented with a view of life as seen in an inverse mirror with everything upside down. Scruton goes on to say, "You don`t want to sleep with your mother because you do; you don`t want to kill your father because you do; you don`t want to rape, pillage, murder because you do. Only the mechanism of `repression` prevents the truth from showing. And maybe we damage ourselves by repressing things; maybe we should let it all hang out, free ourselves from those old taboos and inhibitions, and become what we are."
Scruton`s comments direct us to the essence of the influence of Freudianism on our modern culture. He uses the word "taboos," and this is significant. "Repressions" is Freud`s word for the limitations placed in human life upon the impulses of the unconscious. In popular culture "repressions" is translated into "taboos," and that word carries a heavy load of connotation. "Taboo" carries with it the idea of an irrational ban placed on certain behaviors. The "taboo" is there, not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with a particular act but simply because the current society or culture has forbidden it, for whatever reason. As long as a moral prohibition is viewed as a taboo, many people feel they can disobey it in the name of personal freedom and uninhibited self-expression.
Are taboos merely reflections of meaningless societal prohibitions? I do not think so. Take, for instance, the ancient Greek prohibition of incest-the central issue in Sophocles` drama. The Greeks had observed across many years the destructive effects of incest on the common interests of a working society. In particular, they had seen the effects of in-breeding on their kings and queens. Their moral aversion to incest, along with their condemnation of the other major sin in their moral hierarchy, patricide, was not a passing cultural phenomenon. It was based on solid experiential evidence.
In a similar fashion, look at the Old Testament Ten Commandments. Christians believe that these moral injunctions were God-given, but that does rule out the judgment, not contradictory but complementary, that acts like murder, theft, adultery, and false witness-condemned by the Decalogue–were judged by long experience as serious aberrations in the structure of communal human life. No society can survive for long without such prohibitions. That is the lesson of history and experience.
Of course, it is in the area of sexual behavior that Freudianism has exercised its greatest influence. Freud was virtually obsessed with the human sexual drive, which he saw as the prime mover in human behavior. I am inclined to say (and I realize that some other students in this field will not agree with me here) that the Freudian view of human life is basically an "adolescent" one. I base that observation on the fact that I can well remember a time in my life when the over-active behavior of my glands was a dominant influence in my life and in my moral decisions. Hopefully, however, I have matured a bit since those days. But unbridled and uncontrolled ("unrepressed?") sexual behavior continually produces its tragic consequences in everyday human experience. Too many men and women act sexually in adolescent fashion long after they have reached later years.
The sexual behavior of some supposedly responsible adults is, to be honest, beyond my rational comprehension. Why, to use one all-too-prominent example, would a president of the United States, holder of the most powerful office on earth, choose to jeopardize his position and his reputation for the sake of a few minutes of sexual titillation in the Oval Office? It defies understanding. Across the years I have witnessed the sorry sight of preachers, evangelists, pastors, politicians, business men and women, and a host of ordinary people destroy everything that was presumably valuable to them in exchange for transient sexual experiences. I do not for a moment condone the promiscuous activities of inexperienced teen-agers, but I find their behavior far easier to understand than that of supposedly responsible adults-individuals, quite simply, who have never grown up. The "spin doctors" of advertising understand this and seek to sell everything from toothpaste to coffee with commercials involving sexual situations and innuendo.
Recently I attended a performance of a seldom-produced Noel Coward play called Semi-Monde. The play is virtually plotless. Instead, a large cast of actors and actresses (28 in all, I think) portray a constantly changing parade of meaningless, superficial, manipulative, and destructive sexual encounters and liaisons, both heterosexual and homosexual. The setting is upper class Britain in the l920s, but there is a universal atmosphere to it. In no case was there any attempt to portray love in terms of personal commitment or devotion. The trademark of Coward`s wit and cleverness is clearly set on the dialogue and action, but there is, I think, a sub-text. Coward was under no illusions as to the ultimate meaning and results of what he was dramatically portraying. I must admit that during the performance I laughed a lot, but I finally went away from that experience with a sour taste in my mouth. Coward had cut painfully close to human reality.
Freud was certainly correct in identifying the sexual drive as a prime motivating factor in human behavior, both for good and for evil. Where I think he was deficient was in his ignoring other equally powerful drives. The lust for power-the desire to use and manipulate other human beings for one`s own selfish purposes-is as potent an aphrodisiac as sex for many people. To use obvious historical examples, I do not think one can adequately explain great villains like Hitler and Stalin primarily in terms of sex. The lust for power was at work.
Equally as powerful is the desire for material possessions. Certainly, the lust for power plays an important part here, but our current society is so obsessed with the desire for material gain that it tends to overshadow almost everything else. The nation wide involvement in the stock market, for instance, is for most people who are far from expert, a kind of gambling game or lottery in which the lucky winners reap monetary gains which can then be spent in a consumer-oriented and market-manipulated economy.
If, however, we grant for the moment that Freud`s ideas about human sexuality, as popularly understood, are correct, what does this say about morals? What is clear is that Freudianism offers a uniquely subversive morality, wrapped in scientific jargon. For instance, he asks us to see children as innately sexual beings from the moment of birth, engaged, as Scruton says, "in strategies of seduction, and whose unconscious thoughts are constantly directed to their sexual parts." Freud`s understanding of sexual desire mirrors this understanding. Such desire, according to Freud, arises from the "libido"-an instinctive and amoral force-that focuses on the "erotogenous zones." The normal "sexual aim" is "union of the genitals in the act known as copulation which leads to a release of sexual tension and a temporary extinction of the sexual instinct-a satisfaction analogous to the satisfaction of hunger." From this perspective sex should be handled in the same way as hunger. If one is hungry, one eats. If one is sexually stimulated, one seeks to achieve copulation. In such a picture there is no room for personal love or commitment. There is only an obsession with the genitals.
Freud attributed sexual desire to children from the moment of birth. It is Freudian orthodoxy to think of children, however young and immature, as sexual beings. Their sexual feelings are malleable and can flow in any direction. Any limitation on those feelings, such as the teaching of the moral virtue of chastity, is merely irrational "repression." The protective wall that parents and society have traditionally erected around the innocence (a meaningless term in Freudianism) of children is nothing more than a meaningless taboo.
In contrast to this view, traditional morality-both Christian and secular-has applied a strong dose of common sense to sexual expression. The purpose of moral education, it has believed, is to delay sexual activity until the age when it could be integrated into a responsible life. From this perspective sex cannot be isolated from other areas of normal life. There are many arenas in which we feel justified in limiting participation to individuals who have achieved some degree of maturity. We do not, for instance, allow people to vote until they are 18 years of age. Which requires more maturity and judgment in terms of consequences-voting or having sex?
I am not arguing here for a hedge of legal restrictions around sexual behavior. The attempt to regulate private sexuality by legal prohibition, except in extreme criminal instances such as rape, has proved to be almost totally ineffective. What is required is much more fundamental. We badly need substantial moral teaching of the young and an inculcation of moral values. Sex education in the public schools is necessary, but it must go beyond biological instruction and guidance in birth control. This does not mean an invasion of the public school curriculum by Christian instruction, which would violate the important idea of the separation of church and state. There is ample moral teaching that is shared by Christians, those of other faiths, and, indeed, secularists to form the basis of a solid instruction in sexual responsibility.
The intention of the almost universally shared agreement in this area is, as I understand it, to unite sexual expression with mature adult personal commitment, indeed to make it part of the enormously important existential commitment of marriage. If the sexual drive is as strong as Freudianism pictures it, it becomes even more important that it be consummated by responsible adults, rather than as a thoughtless game by immature adolescents, whatever their calendar age may be.
It is not hard to see the concrete effects of a Freudian view of humanity in our current society. The enormous increase in teen-age pregnancy, the escalating rate of abortion, the decline in the number of lasting marriages, the increasing number of people who are psychologically wounded by unhappy sexual experiences-can these be explained in any other way than by the popular influence of a philosophy that in effect teaches that the orgasm is the be-all and end-all of human experience, to be achieved at any cost, regardless of the effect on other human beings?
To quote Professor Scruton once again, "In place of integration we now have disintegration, and in place of the mature desire between adults the genital obsessions of corrupted kids." Popular Freudianism has elevated individual freedom in the sexual arena to a paramount value. As the oft-heard slogan has it, "If it feels good, do it."
I am a strong supporter of the value of personal freedom, but I also realize that my own freedom extends only so far as it does not impinge upon or limit the freedom of others. In the familiar words of John Donne, "No man is an island." Whether we like it or not, we all live in a community. What adversely affects the welfare of that community eventually adversely affects us all. In exactly the same way that there cannot be moral anarchy in the worlds of government, business, labor, or any of the other important arenas of human life, there most certainly cannot be such amoral irresponsibility in the important realm of sexual behavior.
Morally speaking, I believe we live in a crisis age. Sigmund Freud is not entirely responsible for that situation, but he must share his part of the blame.
ENDNOTES
1. Roger Scruton, The London Times, April 8, 2001. For the benefit of any readers who are familiar with the other works of Professor Scruton, I must point out that I disagree profoundly with most of his philosophical and theological propositions, but I find his analysis of Freud perceptive.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid
