1. Nietzsche, Freud, and the Challenge to Positivism HI 153 Making of the Modern World Week 14

2. What is/was positivism? Scientific view of world; ‘scientism’ Only the observable & measurable counts (for which there is positive proof) Enlightenment rationality in action? Linked to notions of progress Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

3. Irrationality Discovery of emotion and sexuality as driving forces in human nature Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau recognised the force of emotion in human history (L. L. White, The Unconscious before Freud, 1979) Romanticism: artistic movement of late 18 th /early 19 th centuries stresses the idea of authenticity through feeling

4. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900 Trained as philologist (historian of language), specialising in Greek Abandoned academia to become polemicist and cultural critic Passing friendship with composer Wagner Aphoristic style spurned more traditional essayistic approach 1889: nervous collapse; reduced to vegetative state Ailing years spent with sister who cultivated Nietzsche myth

5. The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Apollo, god of order, art, and boundaries Symbolises individuating desire & rationality Socrates (469-399 BCE) `father of rational thought’; for Nietzsche, he represented the spirit of 19 th -century scientism/positivism Dionysus, god of dance, drinking, debauchery & dissolution of boundaries Symbolises human consciousness & irrationality

6. Voluntarism Voluntas = Latin for will Human faculty to foresee actions & project desire onto world Schopenhauer: the only reality is the reality projected from self (i.e. no objective reality outside of self) Nietzsche’s theory of Will to Power: all living beings (and all energy sources) constantly seek to expand their radius of power Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, author of The World as Will and Idea, 1819; early influence on Nietzsche

7. Nietzsche and the Nazis Aristocratic values of the ‘overman’ (Ubermensch) versus the ‘herd morality’ of the masses Belief in great men of history creating own values and ‘overcoming’ or fusing the rational and irrational Nietzsche’s sister fostered connection with Nazism Had to airbrush out Nietzsche’s actual contempt for German Nationalism and anti-semitism Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche greeting Hitler at the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar

8. Deconstructing language Historical development of values Philosophy not exact science because of changing meaning of words Saussure (1857-1913); structuralism; the relationship between the signifier and the signified (word and thing) is entirely arbitrary Through Saussure, Nietzsche an influence on 20 th century literary deconstructionists, like Jacques Derrida Beyond Good and Evil (1886); Genealogy of Morals (1887)

9. Killing God Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72): religion is social construct; projects human notions of goodness onto a supreme being David Strauss, Leben Jesu (1835); historicised religion by examining social context Dislike of ‘other worldliness’ of Christianity with its stress on life after death ‘Eternal recurrence’: would you welcome the perpetual repetition of the moment? If Yes, you have affirmed life, in Nietzsche’s view Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85): an anti-Bible, loosely based on Zoroastrianism; source of Nietzsche’s claim that ‘God is dead ’

10. Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939 Founder of psycho-analysis Began career as neuro-biologist; remained a scientist, using rational means to explore the irrational; Sulloway, Freud. Biologist of the Mind (1992) Treatment of hysteria in patients led to formulation of the `unconscious ’

11. Freud’s method Talking cure: analyst listens to patient, allowing much free association Word association Dream analysis The use of `science’ to cure Unconscious is formed by the process of repression Unconscious reveals itself in dreams, in slips of the tongue, and through the process of psycho-analysis itself Dreams are `the royal road to the unconscious’

12. Freud’s Model Superego = parental values; society; civilisation Ego = Latin for ‘I/me’: the rational individual self, mediating between cultural constraints from above and primal urges from below Id = Latin for ‘it’: the unconscious self which regulates automatic behaviour (breathing during sleep), but also primal instincts, such as reproduction and self- assertion

13. ‘The Ego and the Id’, 1923. ‘The ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id …. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions.’ Freud was ill-served by his translators. See Brenda Maddox, Freud’s Wizard. The Enigma of Ernest Jones (2006) for a recent account of them.

14. Infantile sexuality Oral stage (birth -1 year): fixation on mother’s breast, as source of all good and not-good Anal stage (toddler): fixation on excretory functions Phallic stage (child): beginnings of sexual awareness; Oedipus Complex as child vies for maternal affections with father Childhood abuse: were patients reporting real abuse which Freud had to turn into metaphor to avoid the stigma attached to even mentioning such things?

15. Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) Investigation of social relations, art and religion; Western mores distort personality ‘The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value.’ Marcuse, Eros and Civilisation (1955): `history’ is not the Marxist anti-capitalist class struggle but fight against repression of the instincts Fuels libertarian movements of 1960s in which self- emancipation through revolution of self is the goal

16. Psycho-history Can Freudian models predict behaviour, individual and collective? Erikson, Young Man Luther (1958) explained individual and religious development by medical and psychological episodes in the young Luther’s life Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1931): Nazism released the psychosexual energy of masses in rallies

17. Freud and art Artists draw on interior world Expressionism: art is not an emulation of nature but projection of the interior world of human beings, particularly of the artists Surrealism: emphasises word association, dream worlds

18. Edward Munch, The Scream (1893)

19. Surrealism Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator (1929)

20. Freud and capitalism Advertising seeks to influence subliminal decision-making process ‘If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.’ (Bernays) Positional goods reflecting desire for social status; consumerism and the pleasure principle Edward Bernays, 1891-1995, Freud’s nephew and founder of motivational research

21. David Eder (1865–1936) psycho-analyst Deptford Clinic and Open-Air School, London North of England Education Conference, Jan 1913 `Child Life and Sex Teaching’, Yorkshire Observer, 1 Jan 1914 M. D. Eder and Mrs Eder, `The Conflicts of the Unconscious in the Child’, Child Study, 9:6 (1916), pp. 79-83.