Freud: The Mind of the Moralist

Freud: The Mind of the Moralist
Cover of the first edition
Author Philip Rieff
Country United States
Language English
Subject Sigmund Freud
Publisher Viking Press
Publication date
 1959
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 441 (1961 edition)
ISBN 978-0226716398

Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959; second edition 1961) is a book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the sociologist Philip Rieff, who described his motive in writing it as being to "show the mind of Freud, not the man or the movement he founded, as it derives lessons on the right conduct of life from the misery of living it." The book placed Freud and psychoanalysis in a larger historical context. The writer Susan Sontag contributed to the work to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.

One of Rieff's most influential writings, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist has been called "brilliant" and a "great book". It established Rieff's reputation, together with other books helped place Freud at the center of moral and philosophical inquiry, and has been compared to works such as the philosopher Paul Ricœur's Freud and Philosophy (1965).

Background

Rieff worked on the book while he was married to Susan Sontag, who contributed to it to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.[1]

Summary

Rieff described the "motive and main point" of his book as being to "show the mind of Freud, not the man or the movement he founded, as it derives lessons on the right conduct of life from the misery of living it."[2] Rieff interprets Freud as a conservative. He portrays Freud as "heir to the tradition of Montaigne, Burton, Hobbes, and La Rouchefoucauld, a man deeply impressed by the limitations of the intellect and the obstinacy of the passions." Rieff saw Freud as an advocate of psychic compromise, who believed that people should make the best of an inevitably unhappy fate. Rieff admired Freud for what he saw as his sober realism.[3]

Reception

Mainstream media

M. D. Aeschliman, writing in National Review, compared Freud: The Mind of the Moralist to the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death (1973) and the psychologist Paul Vitz's Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious (1988), describing them all as "great books treating of or inspired by Freud."[4]

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, discussing Rieff's work in The New Republic, described Freud: The Mind of the Moralist a "brilliant book" that "bore down on the tensions between ethics and psychoanalysis", and also called it an "intellectual biography of uncommon suppleness, and a genuine literary achievement". She considered Rieff's expression "psychological man" a memorable term for a new human type who is forever "anxious and insecure" and has "an obsession with self that is unprecedented in human history."[5] The book critic George Scialabba, discussing Rieff's work in Boston Review, called Freud: The Mind of the Moralist a "penetrating and imaginative study". He described the book as a "vigorous dissent" from the standard interpretation of Freud as a proponent of liberation from morality. He maintained that its "melodramatic" style foreshadowed Rieff's "later, full-blown apocalyptic abstractions", and suggested that the historian Christopher Lasch provided a better discussion of contemporary narcissism than did Rieff.[6]

Scientific and academic journals

Freud: The Mind of the Moralist was reviewed by Richard T. LaPierre in the American Journal of Sociology,[7] and the psychologist Henry Murray in American Sociological Review.[8] It was also reviewed in Education.[9] Murray gave Freud: The Mind of the Moralist a positive review, writing that this "remarkably subtle and substantial book, with its nicely ordered sequences of skilled dissections and refined appraisals, is one of those rare products of profound analytic thought and judgment whose most distinctive benefits are inevitably reserved for those who will sit down and brood on it, withholding verdicts until digestion is complete". He also called Freud: The Mind of the Moralist an "unsentimental work composed by a coolly critical, closely identified admirer after a penetrating, scrupulous examination of the whole wide scope of the Master's published writings." Murray credited Rieff with providing a "detailed and exact" survey of Freud's view of the human personality, and "superbly balanced" judgments of Freud's work.[8]

Howard L. Kaye, discussing Rieff's work in the Journal of Classical Sociology, praised Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, and argued that the decline of Freud's reputation since the book's publication does not diminish its value, and that the book is "a powerful reminder of what makes Freud so central as a cultural figure" and Rieff an essential social theorist.[10] The sociologist Neil Smelser, discussing Rieff's work in Social Science Quarterly, described Freud: The Mind of the Moralist as one of Rieff's most influential writings. According to Smelser, the book brought Rieff to the attention of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists, as well as intellectuals. Smelser wrote that, "In the circles in which I moved as a young faculty member the work seemed to be on everybody’s lips, and was generally believed to be the best and most important critical reading of Freud yet." Smelser himself deemed the work brilliant. However, he commented that it was difficult reading for those not familiar with the works of Freud, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, and D. H. Lawrence.[11]

Stephen L. Gardner, discussing Rieff's work in Society, described Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, as a "great book".[12]

Evaluations in books

The philosopher Paul Ricœur, writing in Freud and Philosophy (1965), compared his effort to evaluate Freud from a philosophical standpoint to Rieff's discusion of Freud in Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.[13] Paul Robinson aruged that Rieff's book shows that was the most "erudite and forceful" right-wing author to portray Freud as an thinker whose theories had conservative implications, a view that Robinson sees as confirming the assessment of Freud by left-wing authors such as the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm.[3] The critic Frederick Crews called Freud: The Mind of the Moralist the most helpful book about Freud for "placing psychoanalysis in the context of the intellectual and scientific history and the ethical assumptions from which it emerged."[14] The historian Peter Gay, writing in Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), praised Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.[15]

The philosopher Jeffrey Abramson compared Freud: The Mind of the Moralist to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), Ricœur's Freud and Philosophy (1965), and Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), writing that they jointly placed Freud at the center of moral and philosophical inquiry.[16] Donald C. Abel endorsed Rieff's comment about Freud, "No more compulsively moral man has ever explored the compulsiveness of morality". However, Abel questioned Rieff's argument that Freud's theory is not hedonistic and that Freud did not counsel people to follow the pleasure principle, and instead advocated following the reality principle. He argued that in drawing an opposition between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, Rieff ignores the fact that the latter is an extension of the former.[17]

The philosopher of science Adolf Grünbaum, writing in Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis (1993), described Freud: The Mind of the Moralist as very influential, calling it a "combination of intellectual history, sociology of knowledge, and philosophy of culture", but rejected Rieff's view that in his psychology of religion Freud was guilty of the "genetic fallacy", according to which the psychological origins of religious ideas can be used to pass judgment on their validity, as well as Rieff's conclusion that all psychoanalytic interpretations are tantamount to moral judgments. He accused Rieff of trying to "garner support for religion by offering a psychological discreditation of atheism."[18]

The historian of science Roger Smith wrote that Freud: The Mind of the Moralist is a widely read study of Freud "in relation to changes in the wider culture".[19] Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock described Freud: The Mind of the Moralist as the book that established Rieff's reputation. They also identified Sontag as its unofficial co-author, and cited the fact that Rieff, in his acknowledgements for the first edition of the book, "thanked Susan in conventionally feminine terms" and gave her name as "Susan Rieff", as evidence of his conservatism, noting also that Rieff, after his divorce from Sontag, deleted her name from the acknowledgements of subsequent editions of the book. They suggested that Rieff's view that Freud "anchored himself in the traditional in order to subvert it" as "wishful thinking that says more about Rieff than about Freud."[1]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Rollyson & Paddock 2002, pp. 40–41, 51.
  2. ↑ Rieff 1961, p. xix.
  3. 1 2 Robinson 1990, p. 148.
  4. ↑ Aeschliman 1988, p. 50.
  5. ↑ Lasch-Quinn 2006, pp. 27–31.
  6. ↑ Scialabba 2007, pp. 16–18.
  7. ↑ LaPierre 1959, pp. 312–314.
  8. 1 2 Murray 1960, pp. 299–300.
  9. ↑ S. 1959, p. 564.
  10. ↑ Kaye 2003, pp. 263–277.
  11. ↑ Smelser 2007, pp. 221–229.
  12. ↑ Gardner 2009, pp. 181–189.
  13. ↑ Ricœur 1970, p. xii.
  14. ↑ Crews 1975, p. 189.
  15. ↑ Gay 1995, p. 744.
  16. ↑ Abramson 1986, p. ix.
  17. ↑ Abel 1989, pp. xviii, 63–64.
  18. ↑ Grünbaum 1993, pp. 267–268.
  19. ↑ Smith 1997, p. 988.

Bibliography

Books

  • Abel, Donald C. (1989). Freud on Instinct and Morality. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0024-7.
  • Abramson, Jeffrey B. (1986). Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-2913-0.
  • Crews, Frederick (1975). Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-501947-4.
  • Gay, Peter (1995). Freud: A Life for Our Time. London: Papermac. ISBN 0-333-48638-2.
  • Grünbaum, Adolf (1993). Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press. ISBN 0-8236-6722-7.
  • Ricœur, Paul (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02189-5.
  • Rieff, Philip (1961). Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.
  • Robinson, Paul (1990). The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9716-7.
  • Rollyson, Carl; Paddock, Lisa (2002). Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04928-0.
  • Smith, Roger (1997). The Norton History of the Human Sciences. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31733-1.
Journals

  • Aeschliman, M.D. (1988). "Sigmund Freud's Christian unconscious (Book Review)". National Review. 40 (October 28, 1988).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Gardner, Stephen L. (2009). "Philip Rieff and the Self-Destruction of Democracy". Society. 46 (2).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Kaye, Howard L. (2003). "Rieff's Freud and the Tyranny of Psychology". Journal of Classical Sociology. 3 (3).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • LaPiere, Richard T. (1959). "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist". American Journal of Sociology. 65 (3). doi:10.1086/222698.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth (2006). "The Mind of the Moralist". The New Republic. 235 (9).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Murray, Henry A. (1960). "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Book)". American Sociological Review. 25 (2). doi:10.2307/2092656.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Scialabba, George (2007). "The Curse of Modernity". Boston Review. 32 (4).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Smelser, Neil J. (2007). "Philip Rieff: The Mind of a Dualist". Social Psychology Quarterly. 70 (3). doi:10.1177/019027250707000302.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • S., W. P. (1959). "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist". Education. 79 (9).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
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