By Paul Weiser
Legion are the detractors of Sigmund Freud, and fewer (today) his defenders. Yet it is worth noting even now a fundamental difficulty with his method and conclusions - at least as they're popularly presented.
Freud gave a name - the Subconscious - to what earlier philosophers had long understood as man's capacity for self-deception. This ability to hide (in psychological terms, to repress) memories and motives may as well have this name as any other, and there's value in the category.
But into this newly claimed (though scarcely unknown) territory Freud proceeded to pack his patients' varied self-deceptions: repressed thoughts of incest, violence, and guilt. These, too, he gave names: the Oedipus complex (from Greek literature), the death wish and so forth. The patient's great relief at having to no longer maintain a complicated self-deception - helped out by the doctor's assurances that such forbidden desires were ordinary, ancient, and rooted in the actions of others - seemed to validate these discoveries.
The problem is, Freud dealt with massively self- deceptive people: his patients. Not everyone has a crippling, abandoning father (a Laius to his Oedipus); many, perhaps most fathers are loving though strict when required. And most people's lives are tolerable - a great many never believe in the reality of their own deaths. Want proof? See how they drive!
Yes, there's self-deception (call it repression) - even coy attempts at restoring simple honesty, expressed cryptically in dreams. There is surely virtue in helping those so painfully knotted within themselves to understand their problems, to untie their own thought processes... even if it involves a little bunkum to dodge the full impact of discovered immorality. Priests performed this service, with confession, and still do (though their diversion is penance rather than cheap pseudo-scientific grace). But the point is, people with good lives may need priests - never shrinks.
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