We all know that Freud got a lot of things wrong.  However, his basic premise is spot on– unassailable.  He said that:  “ All behavior is motivated”.  In his brilliant and controversial first book:  “Psychopathology of Everyday Life”, Freud lays out his thesis from his observations of common so-called ‘mistakes’, that we all make , to infer that there are no such things as mistakes. Freud said that there are forces that exist, beyond our awareness and control that play a role in driving our actions.  He called this the unconscious and demonstrated its existence  using such things as slips of the tongue, accident prone acts,  forgetting names and  appointments, losing things as examples of behaviors that we all do unconsciously on purpose

Our former President, Nixon, was infamous for his telling and sometimes hilarious slips of the tongue. For example, in his last State of the Union Address, instead of saying:” In the year to come, Congress will remove the discredited precedent”.  He actually said: “In the year to come, Congress will remove the discredited PRESIDENT”.  He resigned that August. I don’t recall any news commentator picking up on this at that time but years later a book came out about many of his Freudian slips.  Or my favorite joke about the guy in the old joke that complains to his therapist that he doesn’t understand why his wife walked out on him during their 25 wedding anniversary dinner. He said: “Doc, I meant to say—‘Darling would you please pass the butter’—But it came out all wrong’. “Well, what did you say?”: asked the therapist. “It must have been a Freudian Slip”: said the guy. “So what did you say?”; asked the therapist again.  “Well instead of saying—‘Darling please pass the butter’ I said-‘ You miserable bitch, you’ve ruined my life!’

While a proof of the existence of the unconscious mind could never stand up to strict scientific rigor or be proven to exist, in a court of law, psychologically -minded people believe that does. Just like the concept of gravity, which cannot be proven to exist, we infer its existence by the things that it explains. All basic assumptions about the world are taken on faith.  The Western notion that re-production of phenomena equals truth is an example.  This philosophy, logical positivism, assumes the world is rational and ordered in such a way that lends itself to quantification.  Since it is a widely shared belief system, it is assumed to be truth. But it is not unequivocally real. It is just that- a belief system that is not universally accepted.  As Einstein said; “Not everything that counts can be counted, not everything that can be counted counts”. Eastern philosophy would argue, for example, that Descartes was wrong.  It’s not: “I think therefore I am”.  It’s–;” I am therefore I am”.  Or as I prefer:” I feel therefore I am”.     So there you have it! 2000 plus years of existential philosophy distilled into a sentence.   Einstein also said:” Everything should be made as simple as possible, not simpler”. ( Kevin Harris, 1995).

In his day, Freud’s theories were considered radical, (some people even considered them to be heretical) because he lived in an era that was under the sway of Enlightenment philosophical thinking. Philosophers like Locke and Hobbes, believed in the concept of free will.  According to this way of thinking, people were free agents who could consciously choose their own destinies.  So one can see how Freud’s ideas clashed with this notion.  Dr. Freud comes along and says: ”No, we are not free but rather we are controlled by forces that are unseen and unconscious and that have a logic of their own”.   It is mind-boggling to me that even to this day, there are those who disparage the existence of the unconscious mind. There are probably the same people who think global warming is a hoax.