#981 Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen: Was Freud Really a Scientist?

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RECORDED ON FEBRUARY 28th 2024.
Dr. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and French at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research interests include Critical Theory, French literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and psychology. He is the author of several books, his latest one being Freud’s Thinking: An Introduction.

In this episode, we focus on Freud’s Thinking. We start by talking about the premise of the book, and then go through some of Freud’s theories, including the unconscious; repression; trauma; hysteria; the Oedipus Complex; his theory of sexuality; drives, and the death drive; and his theory of culture. Then, we discuss whether Freud was a real scientist, the limitations of his clinical material, and how much credit we should give to him.

Time Links:
00:00 Intro
00:28 The premise of the book
04:04 The unconscious
09:59 Repression
11:17 Trauma, and hysteria
27:30 The Oedipus Complex
35:05 Freud’s theory of sexuality
40:56 Drives
48:43 The death drive
54:27 A theory of culture
1:04:06 Was Freud a scientist?
1:12:16 Freud’s clinical material
1:19:38 How much credit should we give to Freud?
1:22:50 Follow Dr. Borch-Jacobsen’s work!
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#TheDissenter #MikkelBorchJacobsen #Freud

[aminam]

there was important information about how voluntary actions take place in the brain, especially how humans wake up (voluntarily using consciousness type two instead of consciousness type one), the location of the area responsible for that Voluntary action in the brain was mentioned too. that’s highly important too.

[bla]

50:53 MBJ: "The death drive is quite simply the fact that you tend eventually to pass"
Sorry, but this is silly. Either Freud was misusing the term "instinct" here or MBJ is misinterpreting Freud.
54:10 MBJ: "The death drive is a purely theoretical, speculative concept based on biological ideas"
What exactly is "purely theoretical" and "speculative" about the fact that "you tend eventually to pass"? Ricardo is quite right to point out the tension between Freud's death drive theory and evolutionary theory and MBJ utterly fails to show why he is supposedly mistaken.

[aminam]

This is very important:“Endless Memory; Mind Reading; Mindfulness | 60 Minutes Full Episodes
60 Minutes”, Perception is the responsibility of consciousness type two that transforms sensory data into partially processed information to be ready to use by consciousness type one, it’s about brainstem <=> Limbic system <=> cortex, actually self concept bypasses the Limbic system in this case, that was about how consciousness type two process visual sensory data in the occipital lobe (a group of thieves already started to steal and pollute that), and how some humans can remember the fine details of books they read or a scene of a city that painter can draw in details, and why future generations of mankind must understand the working mechanism of the Limbic system (it’s a weak point), and why humans can express rational emotions and thoughts without the need to Limbic system. it’s highly important that all I have written reaches future generations of mankind clean and intact (they will need all that to survive as rational intelligent human entities, it’s a matter of survival for them).

[aminam]

I think that this is much easier to understand: self concept is the responsible for the whole processes that take place in the brain (including generating both personal identity, consciousness type one) and consciousness type two is responsible for processing sensory data including visual sensory data, that’s why some humans can bypass the Limbic system to retrieve memories (consciousness type two is involved in the working mechanism of the Limbic system but it can bypass that), consciousness type two is just an important part of self concept and responsible for processing and monitoring vital processes (plays essential role in those processes). consciousness type two plays a main role in the advanced sophisticated processes of cerebellum too. consciousness type one and type two are similar in some aspects but consciousness type two is far more advanced in some specific processes.

[aminam]

1:07:00 that’s funny, if that’s the case then apply the same approach to current physicists those who adopted string theory, multiverse, ….. etc, because that too is a mere speculations that not possible to test at least now (no one can prove or disprove them and they are very likely wrong). Freud established the current so-called psychology, he had many mistakes and nonsensical interpretations, actually silly thoughts in some cases but in general he was good (he had no enough tools and scientific knowledge but regarding his time he was good), basically current psychology is based on the thoughts of Freud and his students or his collaborators). to concise: that was the beginning of so-called psychology, just imagine how physicists from the 15’nth century was thinking about many physical phenomena.