1 Soren Whited “Philosophy and Psychology (Psychoanalysis)”, Fall 2012 Prof. Ed Casey Constraint, Consciousness, and Freedom in Freudian Psychoanalysis “Our best hope for the future is that intellect—the scientific spirit, reason—may in process of time establish a dictatorship in the mental life of man. The nature of reason is a guarantee that afterwards it will not fail to give man’s emotional impulses and what is determined by them the position they deserve. But the common compulsion exercised by such a dominance of reason will prove to be the strongest uniting bond among men and lead the way to further unions. Whatever, like religions, prohibition against thought, opposes such a development, is a danger for the future of mankind.” -Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 1 “The notion that a non-repressive civilization is impossible is a cornerstone of Freudian theory. However, his theory contains elements that break through this rationalization; they shatter the predominant tradition of Western thought and even suggest its reversal.” -Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization 2 I. The concept of freedom has been a prominent concern, in one way or another, throughout the history of philosophical thought. It gained a particularly central place of prominence, however, in that period of radical philosophical and historical transformation known as the Enlightenment. The reasons for this are manifold, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to account for exactly why freedom became as important as it did at that time, but 1 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, trans. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1965), 212. 2 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 17.