12.0398 Freud on ego-blows

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Thu, 4 Feb 1999 22:16:19 +0000 (BST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 12, No. 398.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 22:05:57 +0000
From: Charles Young <Charles.Young@cgu.edu>
Subject: RE: 12.0394 souls; first things of the humanities

On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Willard wrote:

>Cultural evolution has been characterised by a series of great blows to our
>self-conception: Copernicus' astronomy, to the centrality of the earth,
Darwin's evolution, to our unique place
>among life-forms; Freud's psychoanalysis, to our notion of inner freedom
>from the bestial; and now, of course, Turing's machine.

I missed the original post of this, and WM may have said this, but if not:
Freud himself is the source of this characterization. See "One of the Dif-
ficulties of Psycholanaysis", in P. Rieff, ed., "Sigmund Freud: Character
and Culture_ (New York: Collier Books, 1963). The original paper appeared
in 1917, so the bit about Turing is of course not there.

Best wishes,
Charles

charles.young@cgu.edu

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