SIGMUND FREUD

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Freud described psychoanalysis as the third great blow to human narcissism. The first was Nicolaus Copernicus's refutation of the centrality of the earth; the second was Charles Darwin's refutation of the centrality of mankind to creation. The third was Freud's discovery that people were not even central to their own mental processes: The mind cannot be equated with consciousness because most mental functioning occurs unconsciously. Against philosophical and psychological orthodoxy, Freud insisted that consciousness occurs only in part of the mind—what Freud termed Das Ich (usually translated as the ego)—which only ever attains “incomplete and untrustworthy perceptions” of ...