Freud: The Mind of the Moralist

by Philip Reiff and Philip Rieff

Book Overview

Now a classic, this book was hailed upon its original publication in 1959 as "An event to be acclaimed . . . a book of genuine brilliance on Freud's cultural importance . . . a permanently valuable contribution to the human sciences."--Alastair MacIntyre, Manchester Guardian

"This remarkably subtle and substantial book, with its nicely ordered sequences of skilled dissections and refined appraisals, is one of those rare products of profound...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226716392
• ISBN13: 9780226716398
• Release Date: May 1979
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Not taking what he says literally

Freud was never really young. He was burdened by the wisdom of age. Sigmund Freud's task was the stripping of concealments. He could not abandon physiological presuppositions. Freud derived ideas on psychology from his French sources. His elegant and precise writing style displayed qualities of intellectual patience and thoroughness. Freud's theory of instinct demonstrate the contradictions in nature and culture. Neurotic symptoms are a mask for memory. Freud was fond of the rhetorical device, synadoche, in which the name of a part or attribute is made to stand for the whole. The sense of inevitability in Freud's teachings are in conflict with the myth of democratic culture. The author charges that Freud never understood the ethic of self-sacrifice. In Freud's scheme the super-ego inheritied the Oedipus Complex. The Freudian case histories are vigorously intellectual. The term analysis carries a rationalist promise. Nevertheless, dream is not faithful translation, it is not point for point projection. Nothing is unmediated meaning. The analytic method is indirect. Freud provides a critique of romantic love. Freud describes the psychological process out of which myth develops. He does not distinguish human purpose from natural development. Freud's messianic strain caused him to admire resolute minorities. He revered the moral tenacity of the Jews. He named one of his sons after Oliver Cromwell. He would have preferred an heroic father to a prudent one. Psychoanalysis defends the private man from public encroachment. Freud connected religion with an emotional need for authority. The author speaks of the euthanasia of religion by Freud. Instinctual desire may be the displacement of frustrated moral aspiration. There is a Freudian ethic of honesty. The book seeks to overturn some of the popular misconceptions of Freud and his discipline.