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Maria asked:
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What is the relation between Descartes' mind-body dualism and Freud's ego formation?
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Well, Descartes argued that his mind was distinct from his body but there was a connection between
them and that the mind-body interaction was effected through the pineal gland. Freud studied
neurology before developing psychoanalysis, and he was also a doctor but simply because he was
living in later times he would obviously reject the pineal gland idea. So Freud's position would be that
the mind is closely related to brain, whether he would claim it is the same I don't know because such
speculation is slightly metaphysical. But he did believe that mental activity is the result of neuronal
activity and that the term ego described a pattern of neural organisation. There is a position in
modern neuroscience which states that the sort of illnesses Freud treated, such as neuroses, are not
localisable in the brain but are an all-pervasive or non-identifiable phenomena so there are claims
that the unconscious cannot be identified by a particular brain state. This would imply a non-identity
theory of unconscious mind and body but nothing as extreme as Cartesian dualism.
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As far as the ego formation is concerned this Freud didn't have a theory of how or what neural
mechanism would give rise to displacement of consciousness.
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The ego connects us to reality and has the function of repressing impulses and instincts, but it
wouldn't be what Descartes takes the mind to be, ie a 'thinking thing'. A thinking thing is rational and
cognitive, as is the ego, but for Freud the unconscious is always present even though it is repressed
and not available to consciousness. The non-rational, or the unconscious, doesn't just have an affect
on the pathological ill. We all dream, indulge in wishful thinking and make slips of the tongue. Also
artistic creativity depends upon the same mechanism as dreams. I wonder how Descartes' own story
about himself as a thinking thing was driven?
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The energy provided by instinct and impulses repressed into the unconscious is the driving force of
life. For Freud we wouldn't have a mind without the unconscious.
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Rachel Browne
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