Freud and Philosophy of Mind, Volume 1: Reconstructing the Argument for Unconscious Mental States

392 Pages·2017·3.01 MB·English

by  Jerome C. Wakefield

Jerome C. Wakefield
F REUD
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O
PHILOSOPHY
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of

Reconstructing the Argument
for Unconscious Mental States
Freud and Philosophy of Mind, Volume 1
Jerome C. Wakefield
Freud and Philosophy
of Mind, Volume 1
Reconstructing the Argument for Unconscious
Mental States
Jerome C. Wakefield
Silver School of Social Work and
Department of Psychiatry
New York University
New York, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-96342-6 ISBN 978-3-319-96343-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96343-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951045
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A
cknowledgements
I am startled to realize that this book has taken about twenty years to
complete, admittedly with efforts that were highly intermittent. I started
working on the topic of Freud and philosophy of mind during my grad-
uate student days studying philosophy at Berkeley. The basic idea of the
book occurred to me then and formed the basis for my doctoral disser-
tation with John Searle as Chair and Hubert Dreyfus as a close advisor
on my committee. John and Bert offered me an extraordinarily vital and
rigorous philosophical foundation, and I express my heartfelt gratitude
to them for shaping my intellectual growth in inspiring and enriching
ways that I still draw on every single day—sadly, my appreciation must be
expressed posthumously to Bert. This book is a much-altered descendent
of the first section of that doctoral dissertation, which I finally completed
in 2001 while holding academic appointments in my other field, social
work.
Some elements of this project were presented to the Seminar
on Science and Society in the philosophy department at Bordeaux
Montaigne University, Bordeaux, France, in 2017, and I thank the
department and the seminar’s director, Steeves Demazeux, for that
opportunity and for the spirited interchange that followed. Earlier
versions of parts of the project were presented to the Group for
Psychoanalysis and the Humanities, Bologna, Italy; the Center for
the Study of Mind in Nature, Institute for Philosophy, University of
Oslo; and the Institute of Philosophy, Catholic University of Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium, all in 2009–2010. I am grateful for the constructive
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
interchanges that occurred on each of these occasions. I also thank
my colleagues and the candidates at the Institute for Psychoanalytic
Education at NYU for their stimulating questions when attending my
course on Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind.
I also wish to thank my acquisitions editor at Palgrave Macmillan,
Rachel Daniel, for her receptiveness to the vision behind this series of
monographs on Freud and philosophy of mind and her nurturing of the
proposal through to acceptance. To her and to Palgrave, I express my
appreciation for the exceptional opportunity they have afforded me.
On the last leg of this long journey during the preparation of the final
manuscript, my extraordinarily capable and tireless research assistant,
Jordan Conrad—who happily also has training in both philosophy and
psychoanalysis as well as social work—was an invaluable interlocutor, edi-
tor, and friend. He helped to make the completion of this project a real-
ity rather than the theoretical entity it had been for so long, and he made
it a much-improved reality at that.
Finally, I am most of all grateful for the love, the many forms of sup-
port, and the tolerance of my idiosyncratic ways from my wife, Lisa N.
Peters, and my sons, Joshua and Zachary Wakefield. Despite the family
sacrifices that scholarly writing entails, they provided me with an encour-
aging context every day that affirmed the meaningfulness of personal and
intellectual striving. With love and admiration, I dedicate this book to
them.
P F P
rAise for reud and hilosoPhy
M , V 1
oF ind oluMe
“This is a groundbreaking book, the first to unpack comprehensively the
implications of Freud’s radical proposal, made in 1900, to the effect that
mental activity (i.e., what we now call cognition) is unconscious in itself,
and therefore consists fundamentally in the same sort of stuff as the rest
of the natural universe. Wakefield becomes the first philosopher to rise to
the challenge that Freud set in 1913, when he wrote that “the hypoth-
esis of unconscious mental activities must compel philosophy to decide
one way or the other and, if it accepts the idea, to modify its own views
on the relation of mind to body so that they may conform to the new
knowledge.” The insights that flow from Wakefield’s careful analysis have
substantial implications not only for the philosophy of mind but also for
some of the most pressing questions facing the cognitive and affective
neurosciences today.”
—Mark Solms, Editor of The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
“Is it still possible today to say something about Freud that is both new
and relevant? With the first volume of Freud and Philosophy of Mind,
Jerome Wakefield shows that it is. Wakefield reconstructs Freud’s defense
of the possibility and importance of unconscious mental states as a gen-
uinely philosophical endeavor. To do this, he relies on a careful reading
of Freud’s texts, but also on analytical tools derived from both history
of philosophy and contemporary semantics and philosophy of mind.
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viii PRAISE FOR FREUD AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, VOLUME 1
The result, a portrait of Freud as a rebellious student of Brentano, will
be of tremendous interest to philosophers, psychologists and historians
alike.”
—Denis Forest, Professor of Philosophy of Science, Paris 1 Panthéon-
Sorbonne University
“This is a brilliant and bold book. It provides the deepest analysis of the
concept of unconscious mental states I have read. The main claim of the
book, presented with a level of lucidity characteristic of Wakefield’s writ-
ing, is that Freud is a prescient and major contributor to a coherent phi-
losophy of mind and a major influence on the emergence of a primary
emphasis on unconscious mental states and processes in contemporary
cognitive science. This book will radically alter our recognition of Freud
as a philosopher of mind. For anyone interested in the profound issues
inherent in the concept of unconscious mental states and for anyone
who wants to have his or her mind stretched, this book provides major
rewards.”
—Morris Eagle, Professor Emeritus, Derner Institute for Advanced
Psychological Studies, Author of Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis
and Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
“Wakefield’s attempt is simply unprecedented. In his hands, the philoso-
phy of psychoanalysis is no longer the worn out critique of Freud’s clin-
ical theses on the dynamic unconscious or repression. His Freud is, so
to speak, hovering above psychoanalysis itself, for his true founding ges-
ture was for all of modern psychology including cognitive science, and
it was to separate mind from consciousness and to endow brain states
with intrinsic intentionality. Never before in contemporary philosophy of
mind has the meaning of a radically anti-Cartesian concept of the uncon-
scious been so precisely delineated. A conceptual tour de force, seam-
lessly expounded with vigor and clarity.”
—Pierre-Henri Castel, Professor of Philosophy and Director of Research,
Institute Marcel Mauss, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences,
Paris, France, Author of Introduction to the Interpretation
of Freud’s Dream: A Philosophy of the Unconscious Mind
“There are two things that are commonly said about Freud in contem-
porary discussions of the mind. One is that Freud revolutionized our
conception of the mind; the other is that Freud’s clinical ideas are largely
PRAISE FOR FREUD AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, VOLUME 1 ix
discredited. Can these claims both be true? What exactly was Freud’s
contribution to our understanding of the mind, if so many of his ideas
have been discredited? In this wide-ranging and masterly work, Jerome
Wakefield gives an account of Freud that answers this question, by exam-
ining in detail the philosophical basis of Freud’s theory of unconscious
intentionality, tracing Freud’s ideas back to his reactions to his teacher
Franz Brentano. Wakefield gives a thrilling and absorbing account of
Freud as a philosopher of the mind, which shows precisely where Freud’s
philosophy came from and how it is relevant today. A very important
work.”
—Tim Crane, Professor of Philosophy, Central European University,
Author of Elements of Mind and The Objects of Thought
“Jerome Wakefield has produced a fascinating, original and masterful
work that brings together history of philosophy and psychology, philos-
ophy of mind and Freudian scholarship to illuminate the origins of con-
tinuing debates around our current understanding of mind and Freud’s
prescient contribution to them. Crystal clear and richly informed by past
and present thought, it is essential reading for anyone with an interest in
the nature of mind.”
—Michael Lacewing, University College London, Co-Editor of
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
“Wakefield’s book is strikingly clear and lucidly argued. This is remark-
able given that he boldly confronts the reader with the most complex
issues in philosophy of mind. This book is not just for experts; its ele-
gant analysis of the roots of the modern conception of mind encourages
a love of its subject and should be on the reading list of every university
student in psychology and philosophy.”
—Paolo Migone, Editor of the journal Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane
“In this very original book, Jerome Wakefield argues that standard ways
of describing Sigmund Freud’s work in terms of his much-disputed clin-
ical theories fail to recognize his profound contribution to philosophy of
mind and the foundations of contemporary cognitive science. By accept-
ing Brentano’s theory that intentionality is the essence of the mental
but rejecting Brentano’s equation of intentionality with consciousness,
Freud posed the profound problem of how nonconscious brain states can
x PRAISE FOR FREUD AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, VOLUME 1
possess intentionality and representationality, a problem that challenges
philosophers and cognitive scientists to this day. Wakefield’s exciting
book should be read by all philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists, and
anyone interested in the essence of the human mind.”
—Edward Erwin, Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami,
Author of A Final Accounting: Philosophical and Empirical
Issues in Freudian Psychology and Editor of The Freud
Encyclopedia: Theory, Therapy, and Culture