Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

After Freud, psychology developed in two different directions. On the
one hand, Carl Jung took Freud’s picture of mind and spread it out
across all of humanity. All people share a collective subconscious,
which can be glimpsed in the fact that completely isolated cultures share
similar characters and themes in their mythologies and cultural foundations.
On the other hand, some psychologists thought of these concepts as too
strange to be included in a real science; psychology needed to purge itself
of everything not capable of being observed or measured in a laboratory
setting. Behaviorism did away with everything in psychology that is not
In one of his great works, , Freud
moves the discussion about the nature of a human from a purely
individualistic position to one in which the larger culture plays
a role.
In his original formulation, the individual strives to emancipate
himself or herself from the rules of the father. The contents of
the subconscious are purely a matter of experiences between
the self and particular individuals in the person’s life.
But in , Freud places the state
or culture in the role of the father. There is in the human a
struggle between the urge to be a self—an individual free from
constraint—and the urge to be a good citizen of a culture that
demands conformity, uniformity, and control.
This control leads to laws and rules of etiquette, which are
enforced from outside and become internalized, thereby
becoming a source of repression of basic urges.
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