Many people argue against the assumption of an absolute psychic determinism by referring to an intense feeling of conviction that there is a free-will. Freud believes that such a feeling of conviction does exist; however, it is not incompatible with the belief in determinism, for, like all normal feelings, it must be justified by something. Furthermore, this conviction is apparent in only certain types of decisions: in weighty and important decisions, one tends to feel driven by psychic compulsion and usually gladly falls back upon such an external force, e.g. Martin Luther’s statement: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” When trivial decisions are being made, however, one feels sure that he could just as easily have acted differently, that he acted on his own free will and without compelling and driving motives. This statement by Freud would seem to be among the most readily testable of those found with in the determinism/free-will debate.
As therapist, Freud focused his interests on the drives in human personality which lay behind his awareness and conscious control; exploring the effects of these drives and charting the findings in convincing fashion, Freud seemed to have made a personal, free agent which is autonomous of Id and Libido nothing more than a fiction. Freud, as scientist, also felt compelled to be deterministic, for prediction and description presuppose order and determinism, However, like Thorndike, Freud believed that the explanation of the determined aspects of behavior in carefully mapped personality patterns served to widen rather than destroy our effective freedom, for recognition of dependable sequences in our emotional functioning permits adaptation and control via increasingly efficient and autonomous ego functioning.
A somewhat more contemporary expression of this point has been made by a psychoanalyst, Noel Mailloux (1953, pp. 1-11) Mailloux states that psychological determinism is not opposed to freedom, but is, on the contrary, a step toward freedom, consisting as it does in the overcoming of primitive indeterminacy or chaos. Determinacy and order are prerequisites to normal development of personality and rationality of choice. Neuroticism arises from fear of such freedom and the responsibility involved in rational choice. Similarly, Samuel D. Lipton (1955, pp. 353-356) states that an individual only feels that he has freedom of will when his ego has developed to the point where he has mastery over unconscious impulses. Knight (1946, p. 252), a Neo-Freudian, took basically an identical stance in speaking of freedom as a subjective feeling dependent on the harmony and integration of the personality.
All of these theorists seem to converge, as did many Classical philosophers, on the notion that freedom is a state of conformity to a necessary, determined condition, that freedom increases in proportion to rationality and insight- though the Freudians would he quick to point out that insight is not sufficient.to release a patient from neurotic strivings. Thus, while these therapists and personality theorists are inclined to emphasis the nonrational nature of a great deal of human behavior, and thereby make animal research a highly valuable enterprise, they do place a great deal of value in reason, thereby leaving the door open for those theorists, e.g. the Ego Psychologists who stress the unique and free status of humans relative to the rest of the world of living organisms.
Download Article 1K Club
