DANIEL SHANAHAN
67
Freud's anti-individualism may not be apparent at first glance. What
is clear, however, is his lack of interest in the specifics of individual per–
sonality in comparison to his aim of developing a generalized picture of
man's mind. Freud was always predisposed toward the inductive side of
psychology: Once he had deduced the psychological roots of a patient's
symptoms, he could not resist asking how his findings could contribute
to a generalized model of the mind. Based on what he saw in individual
patients as he treated them, Freud hoped to work out a dynamic
psychological topography which would make psychical dysfunctionality
as accessible to treatment as physical disease. Perhaps one of the most
dramatic demonstrations of Freud's preoccupation with the theoretical
side of his studies came late in his life, at a meeting of the International
Psychoanalytic Conference, when he rose and spoke personally against
follow-up studies which assessed the long-range effects of psychoanalytic
treatment. Such studies, he felt, might jeopardize faith in the model and
the technique which had been so painstakingly developed over the years,
and he was not willing to let a test of practical effectiveness weigh in the
balance against a theory which, Freud was confident, represented the
mind and its workings accurately.
Freud's neglect, if it can be called that, of practical and individual
needs and concerns in favor of the more theoretical aspects of psycho–
analysis has drawn a great deal of criticism. Since his death, as result-ori–
ented approaches to therapy have given rise to a brand of psychoanalysis
with a strong bent toward existentalism, Freud's model is frequently
faulted for reflecting too much theory and too little therapy. However,
more important for this discussion is the way in which Freud's nonindi–
vidualistic, theoretical interests suggest an attitude about the individual
which is basic to the model of the psyche he finally developed. For what
becomes clear in even a cursory reading of Freud is that psychoanalysis is
an anti-individualistic therapy:
It
harbors undisguised suspicions about the
nature of the total individual, and it sees as its "mission" the reversal of
extreme individualism, the destruction of extreme self-absorption, and the
establishment of psychic distance between the individual and his self-im–
age. What psychoanalysis does, in effect, is to draw the patient back a
step from himself, not simply because distance is a virtue in itself, but be–
cause the very nature of the self - ego, id, and superego interacting to–
gether - is at best highly unreliable and at worst highly destructive. Basi–
cally, not only are Freud and the psychoanalytic world he fathered anti–
narcissist, but they also are highly skeptical about the nature of man.
Like his apparent preoccupation with theory, Freud's skepticism is
the subject of much criticism. Critics often remark that Freud's
pathological focus biased him against human behavior and blinded him
to the more optimistic aspects of hUlTlan nature. Certainly this criticism is
