DANIEL A. SHANAHAN
Freud and Individualism
Freud
once said:
In
later years I denied myself the great pleasure of reading Nietzsche's
later works, with the conscious motive of not wishing
to
be hindered
in the working out of my psychoanalytic impressions by any precon–
ceived ideas.
The parallels between Freud and Nietzsche are indeed amazing. Both
developed theories of psychological functioning based on notions such as
the following: repressed drives foster diseases of the mind; instincts make
th emselves felt no matter how forcefully they are suppressed; and man's
task is to give suppressed instincts expression in ways that will allow him
a richer, fuller life. The list is all but endless. However, Freud's remark
about Nietzsche is more important for the dissimilarities it suggests be–
tween the two men; for dissimilarity is the key to understanding how
Freud and Ni etzsche, for all the correspondence in their .thought, repre–
sent two highly contrasting psychologies.
By his own account, Freud wanted to remain free of presuppositions
and biases as he explored the mind, and instinct told him that the bulk
of
Nietzsche's work - nonempirical work - covered the ground he would
explore sooner or late r; in deference to scientific objectivity, Freud
"denied" himself "the great pleasure of reading Ni etzsche's works." Few
phrases could present the contrast between the style of these two men
more graphically than Freud's "deny myself' and "preconceived ideas."
For Nietzsche, all truth was steeped in subjectivity. But Freud was
convinced that man must distance himself from
himself
in order to achieve
the limited happiness available to him in life; he believed that the only
way to develop distance in human nature was to adopt a ruthless
objectivity and an absolute faithfulness to the scientific method.
In
other
words, attitude, style, and approach distinguish Freud and Nietzsche; they
also go a long way toward demonstrating how Freud represents a new
climate of anti-individualism in much the same way that Nietzsche
represents an older, individualistic school of thought.
