The Existentialist Critique of Freud : : The Crisis of Autonomy / / Gerald N. Izenberg.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton Legacy Lib. eBook Package 1931-1979
• VerfasserIn: Izenberg, Gerald N.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2015]; ©1976
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 1490
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (368 p.)

Although largely sympathetic to Freud's clinical achievement, the existentialists criticized Freudian metapsychology as inappropriate to a truly humanistic psychology. Gerald Izenberg evaluates the critique of Freud in the work of two existential philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, and two existential psychiatrists, Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. His book interprets the relationship of psychoanalysis and existentialism and traces the history of a crisis in the European rationalist tradition. The author unveils the positivist foundations of Freud's theory of meaning and discusses the reactions it provoked in the work of Binswanger, Boss, and Sartre. Probing beneath the methodological dispute, he shows that the argument involved a challenge to the conception of the self that had dominated European thought since the Enlightenment. Existentialism, reflecting the turmoil of the inter-war and post-war years, furnished a theory of motivation better able to account for Freud's clinical data than his own rationalist metapsychology. This theory made problematic the existentialist idea of authenticity and freedom, however, and so the attempt to provide a substitute ethic and concept of mental health ended in failure, although in the process the basic questions were posed that must be answered in any modern social theory.Originally published in 1976.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Table of Contents -- Introduction. The Crisis of Autonomy -- Chapter One. The Positivist Foundation of Freud's Theory of Meaning -- Chapter Two. The Background of the Existential Critique -- Chapter Three. The Existential Critique of Psychoanalytic Theory -- Chapter Four. The Historical Significance of the Existential Critique -- Chapter Five. The Existentialist Concept of the Self -- Chapter Six. Authenticity as an Ethic and as a Concept of Health -- Chapter Seven. Ideology and Social Theory in Psychoanalysis and Existentialism -- Bibliography -- Index