Freud's Psychoanalysis

One of the significant philosophical positions which deals with humanism and reason is Marxism. Marx achieved an immense theoretical revolution in the domain of socio-economic theory to open up a critique of the so called liberal humanist ideology that could cater to only one section of the society. Marxism’s epistemological and ontological confrontations are with the liberal humanist notions of self and identity which remain outside politics, history, society and economic organization. The Hegelian dialectical philosophy assumed that everything happens within an abstract consciousness. Ideas and the material world, for Hegelians emanate from this consciousness. But for Marxism, consciousness is determined by one’s societal life and not the

One of Freud’s major contributions to European philosophy and culture was his critique and revision of the Kantian theory of reason. He rejected the Kantian transcendental idea that human mind can completely understand its essence through critical reasoning. Freud instead postulated that the human mind is unknowable as it is governed by unconscious motives and drives. Though there are certain means by which the human mind can be analysed, most of its unconscious domains are impenetrable. Freud developed his Psychoanalysis as a means to understand the relation between the somatic reality of the senses and language. He again postulated that the basic reason for hysteria n individuals is the result of Oedipus complex, an absence of the resolution of childhood sexuality. Freud thus makes his clinical theory a critique of society and culture. Freud’s theory of society and culture are diametrically opposed to Kant’s theory of the progressive rationalization and consequent freedom and maturity of the individual. While Kant argues that the progressive rationalisation would put restraints on individual instincts and passions and consequent liberation of the individual, Freud argues that the society is a very complex structure and that restraints on eros would end in thanatos that is self destructive tendencies. Society would ultimately become an aggregate of neurotics and hysterics.
The Freudian psychoanalytic theory is a radical critique and subversion of all the major assumptions of humanist philosophy. The central argument of Freudianism in itself challenges the humanist assumption that consciousness is the most universal attribute of mental processes. Psychoanalysis challenges the liberal humanist notion of what does it mean to be human. Freud in his Introductory